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OL    JUN^51982 


Form  L9-Sei'ies  444 


THE  MESSAGE  OF  FROEBEL 


AND 


OTHER   ESSAYS 


NORA  ARCHIBALD  SMITH 

Author  of  "Under  the  Cactus  Flag,"  "The  Kinder- 
garten IN  a  Nutshell,"  and  "The  Children  of  the 
Future":  Joint-Author  with  Kate  Douglas  Wiggin 
OF  "  The  Republic  of  Childhood,"  "  The  Story  Hour," 
AND  "Children's  Rights" 

'■'■  Kom7nt  lasst  iins  misern  Khtdcrn  leben^^ 


rgoo 
MILTON    BRADLEY    COMPANY 
Springfield,  Mass. 

New  York  Philadelphia  Atlanta  San  Francisco 


Copyrighted,   igoo. 
By    MILTOX    BRADLEY    COMPANY, 

SPKIVOFIELD,     llASS. 


SPRINGFIELD,    MASS.  . 
SPRINGFIELD    PRIN'TINC;    AND    BINDING    COMPANY. 

I  goo. 


_\5 

V5on 


CONTENTS* 

The  Message  of  Froebel,         -         -  ,      -         -         -  5 

The  Spirit  of  Reverence,          -          -          -         -         -  15 

Training"  the  Imagination,       -----  23 

The  Unsocial   Child,        -          -      .    -          -          -          -  31 

The  Children's  Guild  of  Play,        .          -          -          .  41 

The  Guild  of  the  Brave   Poor  Things,              -  49 

The  Social   Inclosure  of  Childhood,          -          -          -  57 

Dame  Nature's  Play-Sciiool,             -                   -         -  63 

Shooting  Folly  as  it  Flies.      -----  73 

The  Personality  of  the  Kindergarten  Training  Teacher,  So 

N  Our  Nursery  Tales  :   To-day  and  Yesterday,    -         -  91 


*  Thanks  are  (Ine  to  the  editors  of  "The  Outlook,"  "The  Nursery," 
"The  Kindergarten  Review,"  "Table  Talk,"  and  "The  Congregational- 
ist,"  for  i)ermission  to  reprint  the  above  essays,  which  have  been 
revised  and  extended  for  the  present  volume. 


V-- 


The  Message  of  Froebel. 

"Kohiinl    lusst    itns   unseni   Kindcni    lebcn." 

2-33  g=  5" 
Ix  a  late  number  of  the  Cornhill  Magazine  a  witty 

and  forcible  writer  arrays  himself  in  argnment  against 
the  "message,"  which  he  declares  to  have  been  "de- 
livered to  the  world  by  Froebel,  the  great  apostle  of 
modern  theories  of  education.'' 

This  message,  which  Froebel  adopted  from  Schiller, 
by  the  way,  is  given  by  the  Cornhill  writer  as  "Come  let 
ns  live  for  our  children,"  and  b}'  the  change  of  an  in- 
significant preposition  is  thus  converted  into  some- 
thing quite  different  from  its  original  purpose. 

The  thought  in  its  ideal  and  inclusive  form  has 
confessedlv  been  taken  as  the  watchword  of  the  kinder- 
garten; it  has  been  painted  on  banners,  embroidered 
on  cardboard,  illuminated  beneath  pictures,  wrought 
in  evergreen,  set  in  stained  glass,  painted  on  title- 
23ages,  used  as  a  text  for  sermons ;  but  note  that  the 
motto  as  it  shines  and  glows  in  silk  and  color  and  gild- 
ing, or  looks  out  u})on  you  from  the  fair  white  page 
runs,  "Come  let  us  live  iritJi  our  children." 

To  live  for  them  is  something  we  are  all  too  prone 
to  do,  in  the  sense  of  desiring  to  bear  their  Inirdens,  to 
save  them  grief  through  the  imparting  of  our  own 
experiences ;  to  live  with  them  is  another  matter,  and  a 
far  more  difficult  one,  im])lying  on  our  i)art,  as  Dr. 


(i  THE   MESSAGE  OF   FROEBEL. 

llailmaiui  says,  "Syinpatliy  witli  eliildhood,  adapta- 
bility to  children,  knowledge  and  appreciation  of  child- 
nature";  but  it  was  this  that  Froebel  advocated,  and 
u|ti>ii  this  ideal  that  the  kindergarten  is  builded. 

11'  we  consider  the  Froebelian  message  as  given  in 
the  article  mentioned,  we  see  at  once  that  it  makes  a 
famous  windmill  for  a  modern  Don  Quixote  to  tilt 
against.  "Let  ns  live  for  our  children,'' — a  saying 
which  being  interpreted  according  to  Mr.  Stephen 
(twynn.  means  educating  them  so  that  they  may  live 
for  their  children,  a  process  which  would  culminate  in 
a  world  jierpetually  full  of  parents  sacrificing  their 
lives  to  make  their  offspring  so  moral  that  they  in 
their  turn  would  repeat  the  sacrifice.  "And  so  on, 
ad  infinitum."  says  ^Ir.  Gwynn,  though  we  may  assure 
ourselves  that  this  phrase  at  least  is  a  mistaken  one, 
for  after  a  few  generations  of  complete  self-forgetful- 
ness,  self-suppression,  and  self-effacement  all  healthy 
instincts  would  be  so  crushed  out  that  there  would  be 
nothing  to  transmit  to  descendants  and  the  world 
would  come  to  a  sudden  stop,  like  a  clock  run  down. 

Fathers  and  mothers  take  themselves  too  seriously 
nowadays,  says  our  antagonist,  and  the  model  Froe- 
belian parent  is  apt  to  become  a  prig  and  maker 
of  prigs  and  to  acquire  "a  habit  of  imparting  instruc-" 
tion  which  makes  him  intolerable  in  all  societies." 
This  amusing  statement,  if  true,  might  well  give 
us  pause  in  our  mad  career  of  Froebelianism,  lest  we 
end  in  establishing,  as  did  the  father  of  Maria  Edge- 
Avorth,  "an  appalling  family  seminary  of  all  the  vir- 


THE   ilESSAGE   OF  FKOEBEL.  7 

tues  where  nothing  escaped  the  system  of  education 
and  ever^'thing  was  made  suhservient  to  the  moral 
discipline  of  the  house." ,  That  the  gifted  Irishwoman 
saved  her  soul  alive  in  such  an  atmosphere,  however, 
and  that  her  creative  faculty  and  sense  of  humor  were 
not  chilled  in  the  bud  by  the  deadly  seriousness  and 
frozen  virtue  of  tlie  household,  gives  us  a  ray  of  hope 
for  ourselves  and  seems  to  prove  that  things  were  not 
after  all  quite  so  bad  with  her  as  they  have  been 
painted. 

Let  us  consider  some  of  the  varied  objections  which 
Mr.  Gw3'nn  adduces  to  the  conduct  of  life  according 
to  his  version  of  the  message  of  Froebel.  He  com- 
plains first,  as  we  have  noted,  that  it  makes  existence 
a  perpetual  sorry-go-round  of  self-sacrifice,  and, 
second,  another  point  already  stated,  that  it  develops 
prigs  and  prig-makers.  A  third  criticism  advanced, 
is  against  the  folly  cf  attempting  to  bring  unconscious 
moral  influence  to  bear  upon  tlie  eliild  according  to 
the  suggestions  of  the  great  German  educator.  The  re- 
sult of  this  mistaken  procedure  would  be,  as  the  critic 
ingenuously  intimates,  that  the  child  would  early  find 
out  the  all-too-virtuous  intentions  of  his  progenitors 
and  would  either  knowingly  submit  to  them  and  thus 
diminish  his  own  individualit}^  or  rebel  openly  and  al- 
together against  the  directing  force. 

In  the  one  ease  we  foresee,  to  give  our  enemy's 
theory  logical  development,  tliat  the  small  sufferer 
would  become  the  Little  Arthur  of  the  Sunday  school 
books, — the  kind  of  child  that  sends  all  his  pocket 


8  Till-:    MESSAGE   OF    FltOEIiEL. 

niDiU'V  {()  tlir  licjillu'ii:  and  in  tlic  olhcr,  lliat  hi'  wuultl 
Ix'c-ome  an  iiiTant  Ishmael,  saying,  with  his  red  right 
liand  raised  against  every  man,  "I  will  not  be  good 
and   no  one  shall    make  me !" 

AiiDtluT  diverting  objection  alleged  to  living  for 
(iiir  children  is  tliat  we  shall  thus  be  "sending  them 
out  into  lii'c  c(|ui])i)ed  with  a  terribly  undue  sense  of 
their  own  importance";  and  still  another,  and  this 
directed  especially  against  the  kindergarten,  that  "it 
does  not  enforce  the  lesson  of  personal  effort  and 
that  in  laying  itself  out  to  make  things  pleasant  for 
the  learner  it  does  not  make  sufficient  demand  upon 
attention,  nor  call  for  exercise  of  will." 

It  is  quite  true,  as  a  New  England  woman  said  of  a 
loquacious  neighbor,  that  "you  can't  talk  all  day 
'thoiit  sayin"  somethin'  once  in  a  while,"  and  there 
are  several  things  in  this  undeniably  interesting  arti- 
cle that  have  a  keen  edge  of  truth  anil  others  that  at 
least  require  consideration. 

The  arguments  for  the  most  part  are  scarcely  of 
a  kind  that  can  be  answered,  for  they  spring  from  a 
misunderstanding  of  this  so-called  message  of  Froe- 
bel.  It  does  not  call  upon  us  for  complete  self-sacrifice 
for  our  children's  sake,  and,  if  it  did  do  so,  our  own 
healthy  instincts  could  certainly  be  trusted  to  keep 
us  from  a  morbid  desire  to  live  altogether  for  others, 
while  we  trust  that  our  native  modesty  would  prevent 
most  of  us  from  acquiring  the  fatal  habit  deplored  by 
the  Cornhill  writer,  of  imparting  instruction  in  all 
societies. 


THE   MESSAGE   OF   FROEBEL.  i) 

As  to  the  matter  of  unconscious  influence,  no  disci- 
ple of  Froebel  but  would  agree  with  Mr.  Gwynn  that 
parents  who  constantly  sha]3ed  their  conduct  and  con- 
versation for  the  particular  end  of  the  child's  moral 
advantage  would  be,  as  Dogberr}^  said,  "most  tolerable 
and  not  to  be  endured.""  The  silent  spiritual  influence--. 
of  which  Froebel  speaks,  and  upon  which  all  other  great 
religious  teachers  are  eloquent,  can  never  be  directly 
applied;  it  is  unconsciously  given,  unconsciously  re- 
ceived; it  is  a  breath  from  depths  of  being  far  below 
the  surface  waters  of  self-knowledge,  and  we  cannot 
prophesy  whence  it  cometh  nor  whither  it  goeth. 

It  is  both  true  and  wise  to  say  that  character  and 
health  are  often  best  promoted  by  judicious  letting 
alone,  though  we  votaries  of  the  kindergarten  had 
thought  in  our  blindness  that  we,  of  all  people,  least 
needed  to  be  adjured  to  ask  a  little  less  of  education 
and  trust  a  little  more  to  nature. 

The  truth  is  that  if  our  clever  adversary  thoroughly 
understood  tlie  message  of  Froebel  he  would  probably 
be  in  hearty  sympathy  with  it.  He  has  doubtless  been 
talking  over  the  kindergarten  with  youthful  senti- 
mentalists, with  fanatics  who  claim  impossibilities  for 
the  Froebelian  theories,  with  foggy-brained  enthu- 
siasts who  ha\'e  mastered  the  letter  of  the  law  but 
have  never  understood  its  spirit, — and  if  England 
has  produced  as  many  of  these  three  classes  of  persons 
as  the  fertile  soil  of  America  lias  grown.  ]iis  oppor- 
tunities for  conversation  have  been  extended,  if  not 
valuable. 


10  THE   .MESSAGE  OF   EUOEBEL. 

Wo  believe,  for  our  part,  simply  and  seriously, 
and  we  think  sensibly,  that  this  message  of  Froebel 
is  a  divinely-inspired  message  and  that  it  is  one  of 
the  texts  of  a  new  gospel  which  will  regenerate  hvi- 
manity  through  education.  We  believe  that  the  in- 
sight into  baby  life,  into  infantile  needs,  desires  and 
aspirations  which  living  with  them  imparts,  gave  to 
Froebel,  and  has  since  given  to  those  of  his  followers 
who  have  adopted  his  methods  of  study,  a  peculiar 
power  in  dealing  with  children. 

We  think  that  the  often-fpioted  tenement-house 
mother  of  Chicago  had  for  a  moment  the  vision  of  a 
seer  and  almost  the  diction  of  one,  when  she  said 
one  day  to  her  boy's  teacher,  "I  know  why  Dinny's 
alters  so  good  with  you — the  kindergarten  jist  matches 
him  with  his  work." 

It  is  to  this,  we  think,  incontrovertible  fact  that 
it  does  match  the  child,  that  it  provides  him  with 
environment  as  suita1)le  for  his  needs  as  water  to  the 
fish  or  air  to  the  bird,  that  it  develops  him  so  thorough- 
ly and  so  hamioniously,  and  to  the  further  fact  that 
it  matches  child-nature  in  general  is  due  the  marked 
influence  that  it  has  already  exerted  u])on  later  educa- 
tion. 

Even  those  who  find  much  to  criticise  in  its  meth- 
ods are  bounteous  in  praise  of  the  spirit  of  the  work 
and  of  the  marvelous  way  in  which  that  spirit  has 
begun  to  permeate  all  education,  to  stir  beneath  dry 
places  and  to  wake  new  thoughts  into  life. 

To  begin  with  small  things  and  proceed  to  those 


THE  MESSAGE  OF  FEOEBEL.  11 

which  are  more  important,  from  its  peculiar  methods 
of  "playing  with  brightness''  has  come  all  the  color- 
work  now  so  admirabl}^  handled  in  the  primary 
schools. 

Drawing  also,  modeling  in  clay,  nature  study, 
though  all  these  were  used  to  some  extent  before  the 
advent  of  the  kindergarten,  have  yet  received  from 
it  so  great  an  im])etus  and  been  directed  thereby  into 
channels  so  novel  tliat  they  may  almost  be  said  to-day 
to  be  new  branches  of  instruction. 

Country  excursions  and  the  planting  of  school-gar- 
dens,— direct  dutgrovrths  of  kindergarten  practice  ;\ 
vacation-schools  and  public  playgrounds,  fruit  of  Froe-  / 
bel's  conviction  that  happy  and  purposeful  activity 
is  essential  to  childhood, — these  testify  in  all  our 
great  cities  to  the  strength  and  value  of  this  so-called 
"mud-pie  theory  of  education." 

Uno  CygniBus,  the  deviser  of  the  Slojd  system, 
confesses  that  to  Froebel  he  owes  the  seed-thought  of 
his  work,  the  paidologists  call  him  the  father  of  child- 
stud}^  and  the  advocates  of  manual  training  go  so  far 
as  to  state  that  the  kindergarten  is  the  most  perfect 
"all-round"  school  of  industry  in  the  world. 

When  we  reflect,  moreover,  upon  the  great  number 
of  kindergarten  normal  classes  established  in  the  last 
twenty  years,  upon  the  companies  of  enthusiastic,  de- 
voted young  girls  who  annually  graduate  from  them, 
upon  the  mothers'  meetings  carried  on  by  the  directors 
of  all  free  kindergartens,  upon  the  coteries  of  educated 
women  who  are  studving  Froebelian  theories  on  a  more 


12  THE   MESSAGE  OF   FKOEBEL. 

advanoed  i)lane,  and  upon  the  parents'  associations, 
ainiiated  with  these,  in  which  fathers  are  studying  chil- 
dren's ways,  we  begin  to  have  an  idea  of  the  power 
of  tlie  movement  as  a  whole,  and  of  the  value  of 
Froebel's  message:  "Come  let  us  live  with  our  chil- 
dren." 

Nor  are  we  willing  to  agree  witli  Mr.  Stephen 
Gwynn,  whose  opinions,  already  so  often  quoted,  are 
decidedly  stimulating  to  warfare,  that  the  adoption  of 
tliese  theories  lias  an  ironical  result,  that  the  modern 
mother  is  so  profoundly  convinced  that  this  business 
of  education  is  a  difficult  and  a  subtle  one  that  she 
packs  her  children  out  of  the  house  as  soon  as  they 
can  walk  aiul  salves  her  conscii>nee  by  paying  the  bills. 
It  nuiy  indeed  be  that  the  modern  mother  has  "learned 
that  the  early  training  of  a  human  creature  should 
be  intrusted  to  a  person  who  has  minutely  studied 
the  mental  processes  of  children  and  understood  the 
harmoniously  proportionate  development  of  body  and 
mind,"  but  the  committing  to  memory  of  this  stilted 
phraseology  could  hardly  lessen  her  own  sense  of  re- 
sponsibility, nor  avert  from  her  mind  the  conviction 
that  the  truth  is  as  applicable  to  her  as  to  the  teacher. 

Xo,  while  the  message  of  Froebel,  as  exemplified  in 
the  kindergarten,  is  considered,  by  some  of  the  highest 
authorities  in  these  matters,  as  the  greatest  educational 
force  of  the  age,  it  behooves  all  persons  intrusted  with 
the  care  of  children  to  gain  some  knowledge  of  its 
basic  principles  and  of  the  methods  which  it  uses 
to  earrv  tb(^m  ont.    Let  it  be  remembered  at  the  out- 


THE  MESSAGE  OF  FROEBEL.  13 

set,  to' give  a  wide  outlook  upon  the  matter,  that  it  is 
a  system  of  child  training  which  has  nothing  to  do 
with  class,  race,  condition  or  country.  It  has  too 
often  been  considered  as  a  charity  and  not  sufficiently 
valued  as  a  means  of  education,  and  there  has  been 
great  lack  of  appreciation  of  the  fact  that,  as  some- 
body has  wisely  said,  while  it  is  a  desirable  privilege 
for  tlie  children  of  the  poor,  it  is  a  vital  necessity  for 
the  children  of  the  rich. 

Let  it  be  remembered  too,  in  spite  of  all  criticism, 
that  so  much  as  the  child-garden  has  done  as  an 
iniluence  in  shaping  later  education,  in  modifying 
the  work  of  school,  seminary,  college  and  university, 
so  miich  it  may  do  for  the  bal)y  in  every  nursery,  for 
Froebel's  view  of  child  culture  was  that  it  should  begin 
at  birth,  in  the  sub-conscious  period  of  existence. 

He  considers  the  infant  in  the  cradle  and  provides 
numerous  plays  by  which  his  dawning  intelligence  may 
be  addressed,  though  this  training  is  to  be  of  a  follow- 
ing kind  and  is  never  to  interfere  with  Nature's  proc- 
esses and  her  slow  and  gradual  unfolding. 

Even  should  the  mother  never  make  use  of  one  of 
the  kindergarten  technicalities,  she  would,  by  study- 
ing the  writings  of  Froebel,  gain  a  reverence  for  the 
])ersonality  of  the  child  and  an  insight  into  the  three- 
fold relations  of  her  little  one  to  man,  to  nature,  and 
to  God,  which  would  not  only  make  her  a  better 
mother,  but  a  better,  truer  woman. 


THE   SPIEIT   OF  EEVEEE^^CE. 

"Man  does  not  willingly  submit  himself  to  reverence; 
or  rather,  he  never  so  submits  himself:  it  is  a  higher  sense, 
which  must  be  communicated  to  his  nature;  which  only, 
in  some  peculiarly  favored  individuals,  unfolds  itself  spon- 
taneously, who  on  this  account,  too,  have  of  old  been 
looked  upon  as  saints  and  gods.  Here  lies  the  worth,  here 
lies  the  business  of  all   true   religions." 

— Goethe. 

If  there  be  any  basis  of  truth  in  the  popular 
sentiment  which  affixes  hibels  to  the  various  nations 
of  the  earth,  stamping  one  as  light  and  frivolous,  an- 
other as  slow  of  understanding  and  stiff-necked,  an- 
other still  as  treacherous  and  vindictive,  then  do  we 
Americans  stand  accused  at  the  world's  bar,  of  the 
high  crime  of  irreverence.  How  well  foi:nded  is  the 
accusation  each  one  of  us  may  judge  for  himself, 
though  we  may  maintain  with  much  show  of  reason 
that  our  national  fault,  if  indeed  it  be  ours,  is  of  the 
lips  and  not  of  the  heart  and  is  merely  a  light  and 
jesting  way  of  looking  at  things  produced  and  fostered 
by  the  youth  and  gayety  and  prosperity  of  our  country. 

We  are  young  and  strong,  free  and  rich, — it  is  more 
than  a  generation  since  any  widespread  national 
calamity  befell  us,  what  wonder  then  if  we  look  at 
the  A^orld  through  rose-colored  spectacles  and  see  each 
other's  faces  broad  with  smiles  as  in  a  convex  mirror? 
May  not  this  so-called  irreverence,  too,  bo  in  some 


16  THE    MESSAGE  OF   FROEBEL. 

sense  a  matter  of  climate?  In  the  posthumous  diary, 
lately  published,  of  a  gifted  American  girl,  she  says 
with  keen  insight,  "How  wonderful  it  is  that  we 
should  have  all  the  sunshine  in  our  land  I  Xo  wonder 
that  we  are  cheerful,  and  that  we  are  always  half  in 
jest.     God  said  we  might  be.'' 

We  may  consider  perhajjs  that  we  have  divine 
warrant  for  an  optimistic,  joyous  spirit,  for  lightness 
of  heart  and  some  consequent  lightness  of  speech, 
but  we  must  beware  lest  this  lead  us  too  far.  If  we 
are  in  truth  irreverent  as  a  people,  irreverent  of  heart 
and  in  the  real  sense  of  the  word,  then  we  are  lacking 
in  the  one  thing  upon  which,  in  the  opinion  of  the 
world's  greatest  philosophers,  "all  depends  for  making 
man  in  every  point  a  man." 

Goethe,  in  "Wilhelm  Meister's  Apprenticeship  and 
Travels,"  leads  his  hero  to  the  "Pedagogic  Province"" 
where  his  son  is  to  be  educated,  and  hardly  has  he 
crossed  the  borders  of  that  fair  land  when  he  is  struck 
with  the  three  different  attitudes  and  expressions  as- 
sumed by  the  companies  of  children  he  meets  as  their 
leaders  and  teachers  pass  by.  The  youngest  cross  their 
hands  upon  their  breasts  and  look  joyfully  toward 
heaven;  the  next  in  age  fold  their  arms  behind  their 
backs  and  turn  upon  the  earth  a  smiling  look,  while 
the  oldest,  with  frank  and  spiritual  air,  their  hands 
by  their  sides,  turn  their  heads  toward  their  comrades 
and  form  themselves  into  a  line, — the  younger  chil- 
dren, be  it  understood,  always  standing  separate. 

These  three  kinds   of  gesture   are  interpreted   to 


THE    Sl'IKIT    OF    REVERENCE.  17 

Wilhelm  as  symbolic  of  the  three  reverences  which  it 
is  the  object  of  education  to  foster.  .  The  first  is 
reverence  to  a  God  above  who  images  and  reveals  him- 
self in  parents,  teachers,  and  superiors;  the  second  is 
reverence  for  rhe  earth  and  all  that  lives  upon  it, 
for  its  bounty,  its  laws,  and  the  joys  and  sorrows  that 
it   gives   us. 

When  the  lessons  indicated  by  the  first  two  pos- 
tures have  been  mastered  the  pupil  is  freed  from  them 
and  assuming  the  third  attitude  learns  reverence  to 
man.  Turning  to  his  fellows,  he  ranges  himself  with 
them  and  stands  ready  to  give  and  take,  to  love  and 
admire,  to  help  and  be  helped  and  in  combination  with 
his  equals  to  face  the  world. 

From  these  reverences,  says  Goethe,  springs  the 
highest  reverence, — reverence  for  one's  self, — and  the 
severest  punishment  ever  inflicted  upon  pupils  in  the 
"Pedagogic  Province"  is  to  be  declared  unworthy  to 
show  forth  any  phase  of  the  virtue  which  all  influences 
are  conspiring  to  teach. 

It  is  Goethe's  opinion  that  well-formed  healthy 
human  beings  bring  much  into  the  world  with  them, 
but  that  no  child  brings  reverence.  It  is  a  higher 
sense,  he  says,  which  must  be  communicated,  and  in 
the  communication  lies  the  business  not  only  of  educa- 
tion but  of  all  true  religions. 

If  it  is  the  general  agreement  that  American  chil- 
dren, and  consequently  adults,  are  peculiarly  lacking 
in  this  virtue,  then  we  must  cast  about  for  methods 
hy  which  it  may  be  imparted,  for  the  soul  without  it 


18  THE   MESSAGE  OF  FROEBEL. 

is  but  a  parched  coiintrv  lacking  the  gentle  dew,  which, 
nightly  falling,  i-cfreshes  every  tender  bud  of  good- 
ness. 

Taking  np  the  first  reverence,  may  we  not  question 
whether  the  religious  education  of  our  little  ones  is  all 
that  it  might  be.  Ts  their  Sunday  school  really  a 
place  of  spiritual  influences  where  some  simple  lesson 
is  learned,  some  delicate  impression  made  each  week? 
Is  the  "grace  before  meat*'  they  daily  hear,  a  clearl}^- 
repeated,  heartfelt  invocation  varied  occasionally  to 
suit  varying  circumstances  and  looked  for  and  re- 
incmhcri'd  l)ecause  so  varied?  Are  the  family  prayers, 
whether  of  tlaily  or  weekly  occurrence,  so  planned 
as  to  interest  even  the  youngest  auditors?  Do  we 
speak  of  religious  things  with  respect  in  the  children's 
presence,  or  are  we,  to  quote  Goethe  again,  "indiffer- 
ent towards  God.  contemptuous  towards  the  world, 
spiteful  towards  equals"*  ? 

Is  church-going  a  matter  of  importance,  of  real 
meaning  with  us,  an  occasion  looked  forward  to  so 
gladly  that  the  child  counts  it  a  high  festival  when  he 
also  is  occasionally  allowed  to  attend  the  services? 
It  is  true  that  he  may  understand  very  few  of  the 
songs  that  are  sung  and  perhaps  none  of  the  words 
that  are  spoken,  but  these  matters  will  by  no  means 
affect  his  deep  impression  of  the  reverent  spirit 
breathed  through  the  sacred  place,  of  the  common 
aspiration  that  binds  together  the  many  hearts  that 
beat  about  him. 

And  lastly,  is  the  child's  own  prayer  at  night  faith- 


THE    SPIRIT    OF    REVERENCE.  19 

fully  heard  and  with  reverent  leisure?  The  rhymed 
or  metrical  petitions  which  we  teach  our  children  are 
commonly  poor  things  enough  and  could  we  not  trust 
the  Lord  to  know  what  we  mean  to  impart  by  them, 
as  well  as  to  spread  his  influence  above  and  through 
and  beyond  ours,  our  charges  would  often  gain  little 
by  their  infantile  devotions. 

The  nightly  blessing,  when  the  little  one  is  tucked 
away  in  bed,  is  something  seldom  heard  perhaps  and 
yet  there  is  no  simple  ceremony  more  devout  and  more 
impressive.  There  is  a  child,  of  yesterday  who  well 
remembers  the  touch  of  a  cool,  soft  hand  upon  her 
forehead  every  evening  in  the  dusk  and  a  gentle  voice 
that  said  as  she  was  wafted  into  dreamland,  "The  Lord 
bless  thee  and  keep  thee :  the  Lord  shine  upon  thee 
and  be  gracious  unto  thee :  the  Lord  lift  up  his  coun- 
tenance upon  thee  and  give  thee  peace.'"'  A  child  so 
blessed  sleeps  consciously  under  the  shadow  of  the 
everlasting  wings  and  the  soul  thus  early  is  drawn  into 
communion  with  the  highest. 

As  to  the  second  reverence,  that  gained  by  com- 
munion with  Xature  and  comprehension  of  her  varied 
language,  we  frequently  entirely  fail  to  appreciate  its 
importance  or  to  provide  means  by  which  it  may  be 
learned.  Froebel,  whose  eyes  the  T^ord  had  touched 
that  he  might  see  into  the  heart  of  the  child,  tells  us 
that  the  restless  baby  may  often  be  (piieted  at  night  if 
he  is  taken  to  the  window  and  allowed  to  look  out  upon 
the  tranquil  moon  as  she  sails  serenely  through  the 
blue,  and  the  great  teacher  writes  a  song  to  illustrate 


20  THE   MESSAGE  OF   FKOEBEL. 

the  fact,  showing  us  how  we  may  ''make  the  moon's 
attraction  a  point  of  departure  for  the  development  of 
that  spiritual  attraction  of  which  it  is  but  the  vanish- 
ing symbol." 

It  is  not  only  the  moon  and  the  sun  and  the  stars 
and  all  celestial  phenomena  that  naturally  lead  the 
child  to  contemplation  and  wonder,  but  the  life  of 
plants  and  of  animals,  the  wonderful  crystals  of  the 
rocks,  the  exquisite  convokitions  of  the  shells,  the 
delicate  fronds  of  the  sea-moss,  the  deep  golden  heart 
of  the  flowers, — he  is  so  made  that  instinctively  he 
loves  and  admires  all  these  and  he  cannot  look  upon 
them  and  study  them  without  an  irresistible  movement 
of  his  soul  toward  their  Maker  and  his  own.  Nature 
study  is  as  essentially  religious  as  the  instruction 
which  we  are  accustomed  to  think  of  under  that  head, 
and  in  many  cases  perhaps  it  is  even  more  truly  so, 
for  we  cannot  interfere  with  it  so  mucW,  we  cannot 
dim  the  bright  page  so  sadly  by  the  overhanging 
shadow  of  our  own  personality.  The  Great  Artificer 
and  that  which  He  has  made  teach  the  lesson  together 
and  we  have  Init  to  provide  the  right  atmosphere  for 
the  lesson. 

And  wliat  may  we  do  to  teach  the  third  reverence? 
In  the  first  i)lace  let  us  supply  the  child  with  definite 
ideals  which  he  may  admire.  Hero-worship  is  but  an- 
other name  for  reverence,  and  the  tides  of  the  soul  ever 
need  a  moon  to  draw  them  upward  to  the  flood.  In 
history,  ancient  and  modern,  in  romance  and  ballad 
and  legend,  we  have  unlimited  treasures  at  our  com- 


THE    Sl'IKlT    OF    KEVEEENCE.  21 

mand  and  if  tlie  story-teller's  art  be  ours  we  need  no 
other  magic  to  create  wonder  and  reverence  in  tlie 
youthful  heart.  Not  only  must  we  search  the  stores 
of  the  past,  but,  lest  the  child  think  the  giants  are 
all  dead,  let  us  hold  up  to  his  admiration  the  men  and 
women  of  to-day  in  his  own  village  and  township  and 
state  and  country,  those  who  are  now  and  here  living 
noble  lives  and  doing  noble  deeds.  Let  us  strive,  too, 
never  to  destroy  youthful  enthusiasms,  if  reasonably 
well-founded,  by  unduly  sharp  criticism  given  from 
the  standpoint  of  the  adult.  Reverence  is  a  virtue 
which,  like  any  other,  grows  by  exercise,  and  the 
ideal  toward  which  first  it  climbs  must  needs  be  nearer 
the  earth  than  the  point  to  which  it  last  aspires. 

Let  us  too,  as  parents  and  guardians,  strive  ever 
to  maintain  a  just  and  firm  government  in  our  various 
domains,  lest  the  child,  seeing  how  easily  our  rule  is 
set  at  naught,  learn  to  scorn  those  who  are  set  in 
authority  over  him  and  from  despising  earthly  laws 
and  law-givers  begin  to  scoff  at  those  which  are 
heavenly. 

And  what  is  the  conclusion  of  the  whole  matter? 
It  is  that  the  pure  flame  of  reverence  must  glow  in 
our  own  spirits  before  we  can  hope  to  light  it  on 
anotlier's  altars.  Our.  pessimism,  our  bitterness,  our 
hopelessness,  our  contempt  and  carelessness  for  those 
things  which  are  high  and  holy  will  breathe  out  like 
noxious  vapors,  do  what  we  may  to  suppress  them,  and 
will  suffocate  the  first  feeble  flames  of  reverence  as 
they  kindle  in  the  soul  of  the  child. 


TRAINIj^G    THE    IMAGINATION. 

" For,  see,  lie  soared 

B\'  means  of  that  mere  snatch  to  many  a  hoard 
Of  fancies ;  as  some  falling  cone  bears  soft 
The  eye,  along  the  fir-tree  spire,  aloft 
To   a   dove's  nest." 

— Robert  Broicninff. 

The  question  whether  education  should  devote  it- 
self to  cultivating  faculties  already  strong,  or  to  wak- 
ing those  which  lie  dormant,  in  order  to  develop  the 
mind  upon  all  sides,  is  one  about  whicli  there  is 
wide  difference  of  opinion,  and  concerning  which  many 
fierce  l)attles  of  argument  have  been  fought.  If  the 
child  is  "born  short"  in  any  line,  say  the  warriors 
of  the  one  party,  no  amount  of  training  can  supply 
what  Dame  Xature  has  withheld:  why  not,  therefore, 
expend  your  energies  in  cultivating  the  powers  which 
have  been  given  in  fullest  measure? 

Such  an  adage  as  Poeia  nascHur,  non  fit.  has  a 
broad  reach,  it  must  be  confessed;  and  many  of  us, 
after  a  despairing  day  in  the  schoolroom,  spent  in 
hammering  at  the  door  of  an  absent  faculty,  are 
ready  to  take  it  as -a  life  motto,  and  to  protest  that 
the  cultivation  of  natural  aptitudes  is  the  only  fit 
task  of  the  educator. 

But  here  comes  the  party  of  the  other  part,  which 
has  been  breathlessly  waiting  its  chance  to  argue,  and 
declares  that  harmonious  development  should  be  the 


24  THE  MESSAGE  OF   FROEBEL. 

object  of  ideal  education,  and  that  every  faculty  of 
the  cliild  must  be  so  dealt  with  that  it  may  haye  an 
opjiort unity  of  growth,  should  the  life-germ  proye  to 
lie  within  it.  This  seems  a  sensible  argument  also, 
and  we  can  but  wonder  whore,  between  such  opposite 
yit'ws,  the  real  truth  may  be  said  to  lie. 

It  st'cms  to  be  clear,  however,  that,  though  special- 
ists are  the  order  of  the  day,  and  though  we  incline 
more  and  more  every  year  to  the  opinion  that  the 
full  development  of  individuality  is  the  goal  to  be 
readied  in  education,  yet  an  infant  specialist  is  an 
abnormal  creature,  and  the  object  of  early  training, 
at  least,  should  be  to  make  an  "all-round  child." 

These  varied  thoughts  were  suggested  by  the  remark 
of  a  small  boy  which  was  published  among  child-say- 
ings the  other  day.  "]\Iother,"  said  the  infant  skeptic 
in  the  midst  of  a  fairy  story,  "I  really  don't  want  to 
hear  any  more  of  that  stuff;  I  don't  believe  a  word 
of  it." 

It  .is  difficult  to  decide  just  what  remedies  to  apply 
in  such  a  case  as  this,  unless  we  know  something  of 
the  attendant  symptoms,  or  can  learn  enough  of  the 
patient  to  discover  the  probable  cause  of  the  malady. 
It  may,  indeed,  be  no  malady  at  all,  but  an  inherited 
defect,  like  deafness  or  dipsomania;  but  certainly 
some  attempt  should  be  made  to  cure  it,  should  it 
threaten  to  become  permanent.  There  is  a  possibility, 
of  course,  that  it  may  be  only  a  phase  of  development, 
for  Sully  points  out  in  his  "^Studies  of  Childhood" 
that  most  chiklren  are  at  once  matter-of-fact  observers 


TKAINING  THE  IMAGIXATIOX.  25 

and  dreamers,  passing  from  the  one  to  the  other  as  the 
mood  takes  them ;  and  that  the  prodigal  output  of 
fancy,  the  reveling  in  myth  and  story,  is  often  charac- 
teristic of  one  period  of  childhood  only. 

"The  wee  ]nite  of  three  and  a  half,"  he  says, 
"spending  more  than  half  his  days  in  trying  to  realize 
all  manner  of  pretty,. odd,  startling  fancies  about  ani- 
mals, fairies,  and  the  rest,  is  something  vastly  unlike 
the  bo}^  of  six  or  seven,  whose  ■  mind  is  now  bent 
on  understanding  tire  make  and  go  of  machines,  and  of 
that  big  machine,  the  world."    . 

Should  the  skepticism  of  our  small  child  then,  be 
only  a  passing  mood,  we  can  look  upon  it  with  com- 
parative indifference,  assuring  ourselves  that  human 
growth  is  not  always  and  uniformly  lovely  at  every 
stage.  Assuming,  for  the  moment,  that  the  trouble  we 
are  considering  is  only  skin-deep,  we  may  find  various 
reasons  for  it  without  much  difficulty. 

Who  knows  but  that  the  boy  may  have  been  re- 
peating in  a  parrot-like  way  some  remark  he  had 
heard  made  on  a  different  topic,  fully  cognizant,  as 
children  often  are,  that  it  would  serve  to  adorn  him, 
for  a  time,  with  a  peacock  tail  of  notoriety? 

Who  knows  but  that  the  mother  may  have  been 
reading  him  one  of  the  clumsy  modern  fairy  tales, 
finally  shown  by  the  author  to  have  been  only  a  sham, 
or  the  product  of  mince  pie,  from  which  the  child's 
fancy  rightly  revolted  as  from  a  sin  against  the  spirit? 

There  is  a  chance,  however,  that  the  Tuatter  may 
be  a  much  more  serious  one,  and  in  that  case  we  must 


26  THE  MESSAGE  OF  FROEBEL. 

ask  ourst'lvos  wliat  is  to  be  done  for  the  mending  of 
it. 

if  any  one  sweeping  assertion  in  regard  to  chil- 
di'en  is  more  often  made  tliun  another,  it  is,  perhaps, 
that  they  are  full  of  fancy;  and  yet  there  is  plenty 
of  evidence  that  nature  makes  now  and  then  a  decid- 
edly matter-of-fact  and  unimaginative  specimen,  as  if 
to  vary  the  pattern.  Let  not  the  parents  of  our 
little  infidel,  then,  despairingly  persuade  themselves 
that  theirs  is  a  difficulty  never  encountered  before,  for 
every  one  who  has  seen  much  of  children  knows  that 
such  a  white  blackbird  is  now  and  then  to  be  found 
auioug  them.  Xor  let  tliem,  on  the  other  hand,  pride 
tluMuselves  on  the  unusual  quality  of  the  mind  of 
their  offspring,  believing  that  it  will  develop  into  good 
hard  common  sense  by  and  by.  Such  mental  bent  as 
it  does  indicate  will,  on  the  contrary,  if  not  modified 
hy  I'd  Ileal  ion,  be  the  greatest  of  misfortunes,  for  ho 
who  is  absolutely  destitute  of  imagination  can  have  no 
charity,  no  sympathy,  no  creative  ability,  no  ideality, 
no  reverence,  and  no  true  love. 

Yet  we  need  not  conclude  that  because  the  child 
does  not  care  for  myths  and  fairy  tales  he  is  therefore 
utterly  lacking  in  imagination.  Mr.  Ruskin  has  told 
US  ill  '•Pneterita"  that,  when  a  boy,  he  was  incapable 
of  acting  a  part  or  telling  a  tale,  and  that  he  never 
knew  a  child  "whose  thirst  for  visible  fact  was  at 
once  so  eager  and  so  methodic."  The  imagination  was 
there  in  this  ease  in  superabundant  measure,  but  was 
not   vet   in  workinii'  order,   for  the  whole   mind   was 


TRAIXIXG   THE   IMAGIXATIOX.  27 

absorbed  in  other  things,  and  doubtless  more  than 
all  else  in  the  study  of  Xature  and  her  manifestations. 

The  imagination,  too,  may  early  be  directed  to 
science,  and  the  child  show  inexhaustible  interest  in 
machines  and  their  working,  in  rocks  or  stars  or 
flowers  or  animals  or  atmospheric  forces.  Such  a 
child  would  obviously  be  a  bright  and  thoughtful  one, 
and  would  give  such  clear  indications  of  his  natural 
bent  as  to  make  his  future  eqiuilly  clear. 

But  is  there  a  little  one  who  shows  no  keen  inter- 
est in  any  of  these  things,  and  who  does  not  care  for 
tales  of  fancy,  it  will  probably  also  be  noted  that  his 
powers  in  play  are  somewhat  below  the  average,  and 
that  he  does  not  invent  for  himself  any  of  those 
charming  nursery  dramas  in  which  the  youthful  actor 
is  sometimes  so  absorbed  as  apparently  to  lose  his 
own  identity.  Must  we  therefore  conclude  that  he  is 
a  dullard?  It  may  be  so.  or  it  may  be  that  he  is 
merely  undeveloped.  If  the  former  hypothesis  seem 
correct,  let  us  delay  to  write  him  down  an  ass  until  we 
assure  ourselves  that  his  physical  condition  is  normal. 
We  can  hardly  expect  a  child  who  cannot  hear  the 
tick  of  a  watch  a  foot  from  his  ear  to  be  prompt  in 
response  to  verbal  suggestion :  we  can  hope  for  little 
mental  brilliancy  from  a  small  creature  so  afflicted 
with  adenoid  growths,  for  instance,  that  the  act  of 
breathing  takes  all  his  strength;  and  the  faculty  of 
imagination,  which  depends  for  its  power  on  i-apid, 
frequent,  and  clear  perceptions,  cannot  be  s\t|)])osed 
to  have   a  fighting  chance  to  live   in   a   small   beinu' 


28  THE  message:  of  froebel. 

whose  eyesight  has  never  permitted  him  to  see  things 
as  they  are.  All  these  millstones  not  only  may  hang 
about  the  neck  of  a  so-called  dull  child,  but  have  hung 
there  in  numbers  of  well-known  cases,  and  yet  no  one 
has  seen  them  till  their  weight  had  utterly  distorted 
the  growing  intelligence. 

But.  say  the  subject  of  our  discussion  is  in  good 
physical  condition  and  yet  is  heavy  and  stolid  and 
devoid  of  fancy,  what  then  shall  we  do?  If  we  think 
of  imagination  in  its  supremest  meaning,  as  the  crea- 
tive faculty  of  the  poet  or  the  artist,  it  passes,  so  says 
Alexander  Bain,  "entirely  out  of  the  reach  of  express 
training,  and  is  excluded  from  schemes  of  education 
as  too  high  for  the  school." 

Yet  if,  as  already  said,  it  is  dependent  i;pon  knowl- 
edge received  from  the  outward  world  through  the 
perceptions,  and  is  a  rearranging  or  creative  power, 
there  are  many  ways  in  which  it  may  be  developed. 

Perhaps,  though  the  child  has  been  looking  all  1 
life,  he  has  never  really  seen  anything  for  want 
some  one   who   could   direct   his  vision;   perhaps    '^ 
one    thing    of    all    others    which    would    really    ^ 
him   up  has   not   yet   come  within  his  ken;  pe. 
being  naturally  slow  of  perception,  he  has  nev;^,y 
anyone  who  could  vivify  for  him  the  objects 
outside  world,  interpreting  the  thing  seen  to 
mant   intelligence. 

All  these  hindrances  to  the  growth  of  ^ii- 
be  removed  by  dint  of  effort,  and  we  m 
supply  the  child   in  baliyhood  with  somethini 


TRAIXIXG   THE   IMAGIXATIOX.  29 

will  interest  him.  with  })hiythings  which  he  can  re- 
arrange and  combine  according  Lo  his  will,  with  ob- 
jects which  give  him  genuine  delight,  and  thus,  by 
force  of  occupying  himself  with  what  is  small  and 
near  at  hand  and  concrete,  he  may  by  and  by  gain  the 
power  of  reaching  out  to  that  which  is  beyond. 

If  he  has  no  love  of  fairy  stories,  time  is  worse 
than  wasted  in  reading  or  telling  them  to  him.  Why 
not  substitute  the  wonder  tales  of  science,  whose  truth 
can  be  demonstrated  to  any  little  doubting  Thomas? 
"After  all,"  as  Lowell  said,  "tluere  is  as  much  poetry 
in  the  iron  horses  that  eat  fire  as  in  those  of  Diomeil 
that  fed  on  men.  If  you  cut  an  apple  across,  you 
niav  trace  in  it  the  lines  of  the  blossom  that  the  bee 
hummed  around  in  j\Iay ;  and  so  the  soul  of  poetry 
survives  in  things  prosaic."' 

Some  kind  of  literature  the  young  human  crea- 
ture must  have;  and  if  it  be  neither  myth,  fairy  lore, 
!or  science  stories,  we  may  tr}'  hero  tales  when  he  is 
older,  and  read  him  sounding  ballads  that  must  stir  the 
W  )d  of  any  young  thing  that  loves  by  nature,  strife 
^^  '  1  arsuit  and  conquest,  the  ring  of  steel,  the  clash 
tnor,  and  the  shouts  of  battle. 

icehs  has  etched  for  us  in  "Hard  Times"  a  pic- 
child-training  which  deliberately  excludes  ail 
'  to  the  imagination ;  and  we  know  the  fate  of 
:;ifortunate  little   Gradgrind  who  was   so  often 
'..'•S-'Aer  to  wonder.       Even  a  McChoakumchild, 
.  'suppose,   should   know  that   wonder  is   an 
■^    element    in    human    development,    that    it 


30  THE  MESSAGE  OF   FROEBEL. 

stretches  the  niind  and  sets  all  the  faculties  on  tiptoe 
striving  to  catch  tlie  bright  visions  that  float  just  out 
of  reach.  Let  us  reverse  the  Gradgrind  motto  for  our 
children,  and  insist  that  they  cultivate  the  imaginative 
powers,  for  it  was  a  great  lover  of  their  kind  who 
said  that  childish  wonder  was  the  first  step  in  human 
wisdom. 


THE  UXSOGIAL  CHILD. 

"And  so  there  is  not  any  matter,  nor  any  spirit,  nor 
any  creature,  but  it  is  capable  of  a  unity  of  some  kind  with 
other  creatures,  and  in  that  unity  is  its  perfection  and 
theirs,  and  a  pleasure  also  for  the  beholding  of  all  other 
creatures   that   can   behold." 

— John  Ruskin. 

Since  the  majority  of  children  conform  with  more 
or  less  exactness  to  a  certain  standard,  it  would  appear 
unprofitable,  perhaps,  to  devote  much  time  to  a  con- 
sideration of  the  exceptions ;  and  yet,  to  a  mother  who 
has  an  ugly  duckling  in  her  own  family,  he  seems 
of  far  more  importance  than  the  whole  ilock  of  her 
neighbor's  swans. 

One  might  be  tempted,  if  one  were  asked  by  such  a 
parent  how  to  train  the  social  instincts  of  the  young, 
for  instance,  to  reply  hastily  that  the  question  was 
an  automatic,  self-answering  one,  for  that  children 
bring  children  is  a  proverb  known  in  every  land.  And 
yet  the  exception  has  as  much  right  to  be  considered 
as  the  normal  case;  and  now  and  then  in  families  of 
every  grade  of  society  we  fiud  a  little  one  who  seems 
to  prefer  his  own  society  to  that  of  others.  He  cares 
to  mingle,  apparently,  neither  with  his  brothers  and 
sisters,  nor  with  visitors,  and  it  is  often  a  difficult 
matter  to  discover  the  cause  of  this  peculiarity  and 
find  its  remedy,  if  indeed  we  see  fit  to  apply  one. 


33  THE   MESSAGE  OF   FROEBEL. 

It  must  be  conceded  to  be  a  peculiarity,  of  course, 
aud  tlie  child  that  shows  it  is  excej^tional  in  one  way 
or  another;  for  by  nature  life  seeks  life,  and  youth 
yearns  after  youth.  It  is  only  necessary  to  notice 
the  riotous  behavior  of  a  puppy  when  he  has  another 
of  his  kind  to  roll  and  tumble  about  with,  or  to  watch 
twin  lambs  sporting  in  a  meadow,  and  contrast  these 
things  witli  their  demeanor  when  alone,  to  know  that 
companionship  is  needful  and  delightful  to  all  3'oung 
creatures. 

For  what  reasons,  then,  would  a  child  voluntarily 
withdraw  himself  from  his  fellows  and  prefer  to  occupy 
himself  alone? 

In  the  first  place,  there  might  be  a  very  simple  and 
obvious  cause  which  would  make  the  separation  not 
his  fault  but  his  misfortune — that  of  ill  health.  A 
child  may  be  neither  a  cripple  nor  an  invalid  and  yet 
be  so  far  below  par  in  strength  and  energy  that  the 
society  of  rudd}-,  boisterous,  reckless,  romping  urchins 
of  his  own  age  may  be  a  positive  weariness  to  him.  He 
is  not  to  lilame  for  this ;  indeed,  older  people  can  well 
sympathize  with  him  and  can  remember  certain  times 
when  the  aggressive  strength  and  spirits  of  lively,  un- 
tiring, etfervescent,  high-keyed  friends  have  been  evils 
not  to  be  borne. 

Tf  the  little  one  is  in  good  health  and  yet  is  solitarv 
in  his  habits,  it  may  be  that  he  is  too  advanced  in  mind 
to  care  for  the  coni]ianionshi])  of  children  of  his  own 
age,  just  as  a  grown  cat  looks  down  with  dignified 
scorn  upon  the  trivial  gambols  of  a  kitten.    Perhaps  he 


THE    UXSOCIAL    CHILD.  33 

would  get  on  extreme!}'  well  with  older  pla}Tnates  and 
a  more  elaborate  system  of  games,  while  he  finds  those 
offered  to  him  by  circ-umstances  not  in  the  least  worth 
while. 

It  may  be,  too,  that  he  is  of  a  thoughtful,  fanciful 
temperament  and  is  absorbed  in  the  society  of  dream- 
companions  t'Cnfold  more  real  to  him  than  the  people 
of  the  outside  world.  In  many  cases  a  solitary  child, 
or  one  who  is  exceptionally  imaginative,  evolves  for 
himself  an  "invisible  playmate"  who  becomes  as  dear 
as  a  real  one,  to  whom  he  gives  a  name,  who  shares  all 
his  sports  and  nestles  by  his  side  at  night.  Sometimes 
such  a  figure  of  fantasy,  never  more  than  half  believed 
in  and  yet  the  dearer  for  the  doubt,  persists  in  the 
mind  for  years,  serving  all  purposes  of  companionship 
to  the  little  dreamer. 

Xow  and  then,  too,  an  exceptionally  bright  child, 
active  of  mind,  quick  of  perception,  fertile  in  expedi- 
ents, is  surrounded  by  unkind  fate  with  little  dullards 
who  can  neither  originate  anything  themselves  nor 
carry  out  properly  the  details  of  a  game  intrusted  to 
them.  The  fiery  spirit  endures  their  company  as  long 
as  it  well  can  and  then  breaks  impatiently  away,  pre- 
ferring solitude  to  the  crushing  weight  of  such  stu- 
pidity. There  are  plenty  -of  stolid,  unimaginative  chil- 
dren who,  having  no  adequate  views  about  play  as  a 
really  important  and  engrossing  business,  are  quite 
willing  to  go  through  the  same  stereotyped  games  day 
after  day,  and  their  society  is  doubtless  quite  as  tire- 


34  THE   MESSAGE  OF   FROEBEL. 

some  to  a  bright  child  as  that  of  a  grown-up  bore  may- 
be to  ns. 

Sometimes,  again,  a  baby  comes  into  the  world 
will)  the  birthmark  of  genius  on  his  brow,  and  is 
constrained  by  the  very  conditions  of  his  nature  to  go 
through  the  world  to  some  extent  a  solitary.  Sully 
sa)^s,  in  his  "Studies  of  Childhood,"  speaking  of  the 
unusual  and  original  child,  "It  will  possibly  be  found 
that,  although  not  a  romping,  riotous  player,  nor,  in- 
deed, much  disposed  to  join  other  children  in  their 
pastimes,  the  original  child  has  his  own  distinctive 
style  of  play,  which  marks  him  out  as  having  more 
than  other  children  of  that  impulse  to  dream  of  far-off 
things,  and  to  bring  them  near  in  the  illusion  of 
outer  semblance,  which  enters  more  or  less  distinctly 
into  all  art." 

If  you  have  never  seen  one  of  these  strange,  gifted 
children,  you  may  find  a  touching  sketch  of  one  in 
"Missy,"  the  heroine  of  Charlotte  Bronte's  "Villette/^ 
and  another,  done  from  life  by  George  Sand  of  herself, 
in  her  "Histoire  d'une  Vie." 

With  the  thoughts  and  dreams  ana  fancies,  the 
wonderful  solitary  plays,  of  such  a  gifted  human  crea- 
ture, who  would  presume  to  meddle?  Who  would 
force  the  society  of  a  rosy  little  earthly  mortal  on  one 
whose  spirit-wings  have  already  budded? 

If  the  want  of  sociability  in  our  ugly  duckling  is 
due  to  any  of  the  foregoing  causes,  we  have  no  reason 
to  be  anxious,  but  may  rather  Joyfully  look  forward  to 
the  snowy  whiteness  of  plumage  the  swan  will  put 


THE    UXSOCIAL    CHILD.  35 

on  by  and  by;  but,  unfortunately,  there  is  another  side 
to  the  picture,  and  ugly  ducklings  have  been  known 
before  now  to  grow  up  into  still  uglier  ducks  and 
drakes. 

The  unsocial  child  may  be  a  selfish  and  a  miserly 
one,  who  cannot  endure  that  any  hands  but  his  own 
shall  touch  his  cherished  toys,  and  would  rather  doom 
himself  to  complete  isolation  than  have  his  treasures 
meddled  with. 

He  may  also  be  a  youthful  tyrant,  and  betake  him- 
self to  sulk  in  a  corner  if  he  cannot  order  every  detail 
of  the  game.  Unless  he  chances  upon  very  gentle  and 
timid  companions,  he  must  of  necessity  be  unsocial, 
for,  no  matter  how  much  he  wants  to  play,  he  can  find 
few  who  are  willing  to  play  with  him. 

There  is  still  another  unsocial  child  sometimes 
(and  we  must  touch  ver}'  tenderly  upon  his  peculiari- 
ties), who,  from  either  physical  or  mental  defect,  is  not 
quite  as  other  children:  and,  worse  than  this  (or  is 
it  better — who  can  say?),  he  realizes  the  fact.  He 
knows  that  he  does  not  hear  as  soon,  does  not  under- 
stand as  quickly,  cannot  carry  out  ideas  as  rapidly,  as 
the  rest;  he  is  always  stumbling  along  heavy-footed 
after  them,  not  quite  able  to  ""catch  up,"  and  is  often 
the  butt  of  their  thoughtless  gibes.  Who  can  wonder 
if  by  and  by  he  steals  away  from  his  pla^Tnates  now 
and  then,  or  at  last  isolates  liimself  entirely,  shut  in 
with  the  self  that  is  so"  sore  a  burden. 

Yet  such  an  unfortunate,  and  all  the  other  little 
erring  mortals  we  have  touched  upon,   are   in  most 


36  THE  MESSAGE  OF  FROEBEL. 

din'  noed  of  the  society  they  seem  anxious  to  reject. 
The  dreamy,  fanciful  child  would  he  the  better  now 
and  then  for  the  company  of  a  good,  prosaic,  ordinary 
little  mortal,  such  as  he  will  meet  and  perhaps  be 
housed  with  all  along  life's  journey;  the  exceptionally 
bright  child  needs  to  come  in  contact  with  those 
e(]ually  gifted,  and  even  more  gifted  than  he,  that  he 
may  more  justly  estimate  his  own  qualities ;  the  selfish 
child  must  learn  through  love  to  give  up  to  others; 
the  tyrant  must  find  out  early  in  life  that  he  cannot 
always  rule,  and  that  disaster  will  come  if  he  attempts 
to  do  so ;  and  the  small  sufferer  who  is  not  quite  normal 
will  make  wonderful  improvement  if  he  can  mingle 
with  companions  of  his  own  age  who  will  be  kind  and 
gentle  and  considerate  and  allow  him  to  forget  his 
defects  now  and  then. 

A  child  who  is  determinately  unsocial  can  some- 
times be  led  to  break  the  outer  shell  at  least  of  his 
reserve  and  shyness — for  the  trouble  sometimes  lies  in 
these  defects  also — through  the  company  of  pet  ani- 
mals. If  he  is  given  whatever  living  things  his 
heart  most  longs  for,  whether  rabbits  or  pigeons  or 
guinea-pigs  or  white  mice  or  kittens  or  canarjes  or 
puppies;  if  they  are  understood  to  be  his  own  and 
he  is  taught  what  they  need  in  the  way  of  care  and 
food  and  shelter;  if  he  is  made  entirely  responsible 
for  their  welfare,  the  new  duties  and  interests  will 
often  take  him  quite  out  of  himself.  He  will  be  busy, 
happy,  and  absorbed  ;  he  will  learn  to  forget  himself 
somewhat  in  the  needs  of  others,  and  that  is  the  first 


THE    UNSOCIAL    CHILD.  37 

essential  of  living;  and  he  will  have  no  time  to  think 
of  the  innnense  .me  who  has  hloeked  the  way  to  his 
knowing  his  companions.  He  will  meet  another  child 
in  community  of  distress  over  the  ailments  of  a  pet 
rat,  when  he  wonld  be  consumed  with  shyness  if  there 
were  no  subject  of  mutual  interest,  and  thus  he  learns 
unconsciously  how  to  get  on  with  his  fellows. 

Akin  to  this  resource  which  may  be  given  to  an 
unsocial  cliild  is  the  persuading  him  to  take  up  some 
interesting  and  suitable  occupation.  If  he  be  of  a 
scientific  turn,  ciiltivate  his  taste  for  collecting  plants 
or  stones  or  shells ;  if  he  has  a  mechanical  bias,  give 
him  a  turning-lathe  or  a  printing-press;  if  he  is  artis- 
tic, let  him  study  wood-carving,  drawing,  or  clay 
modeling:  it  does  not  matter  which  one  of  these  things 
he  takes  up,  so  long  as  it  interests  him;  but  let  him 
do  something  which  will  employ  physical  as  well  as 
mental  activity,  that  so  he  may  be  delivered  from 
moping  and  brooding. 

It  is  essential  that  this  want  of  sociability  should 
be  cured  in  children  if  it  comes  from  any  such  defects 
as  have  been  described,  and  the  cure  must  begin  early 
or  it  will  be  altogether  useless.  Let  us  study  the 
reasons  for  the  peculiarity  evinced  by  the  special  child 
in  question,  and  then  see  what  may  be  done  to  remove 
them.  The  trouble  may  be  only  a  temporary  one. 
Perhaps  the  little  one  has  been  too  much  with  older 
people  and  is  embarrassed  at  first  with  those  of  his 
own  age;  perhaps  he  is  morbidly  self-conscious,  and 
perhaps  he  is  not  well.     Let  us  study  to  provide  suit- 


38  THE  mes.sac:k  of  froebel. 

aI)U'  ('oinpaiiion^j  for  him,  suitable  in  age,  in  tastes, 
and  in  temperament,  remembering  that  his  whole 
future  destin}'  may  possibly  be  colored  by  this  small 
sunbonneted  maiden  or  this  lad  in  brief  trousers 
whom  we  bring  to  his  side.  And  let  us  beware  of 
setting  him  down  in  a  throng  of  children  and  ex- 
pecting him  to  gambol  at  once.  Do  you  remember, 
in  that  piece  of  child-study,  "Great  Expectations,"' 
how  ^liss  Havisham  took  the  frightened  Pip  by  the 
shoulder  and  fiercely  said,  "Play,  boy,  play !  Why 
don't  you  play?"' 

Such  an  admonition  naturally  chills  the  blood  like 
sitting  down  to  a  dinner  sluuhnved  l)y  the  hostess's 
prayer  that  you  will  be  Ijrilliant. 

There  is  one  last  remark  to  be  made  in  this  paper, 
if  the  writer  may  be  forgiven  in  advance  for  a  consti- 
tutional tendency  to  dwell  upon  it,  an  idea  that  be- 
longs here  by  mental  and  spiritual  right,  and  if  we 
are  to  do  the  subject  justice  it  must  be  introduced. 

If  you  have  a  child  who  shows  a  tendency  to  alien- 
ate himself  from  his  fellows,  who  has  never  learned 
how  to  combine  his  plays  and  occupations  with  others,, 
and  is  thus  not  only  missing  all  the  benefits  of  fellow- 
ship and  communion,  but  is  setting  himself  altogether 
wrong  for  the  practical  business  of  living,  then  I  de 
believe,  and  therefore  I  must  speak,  that  if  such  a 
child  were  early  sent  to  a  good  kindergarten  these  evils 
would  be  corrected  in  the  bud.  If  anything  can  he 
recommended  as  a  cure  for  selfishness,  tyrannical 
spirit,  morbidity,  shjTiess,  listlessness,  and  too  great 


THE    UXSOCIAL    CHILD.  39 

precocity  in  a  little  child ;  if  anything  will  prove  a 
help  to  sluggishness  and  inertness  of  mind,  it  is  the 
kindergarten  atmosphere,  the  Froebelian  theories  car- 
ried out  in  work  and  play  and  everyday  religion, 
under  an  earnest,  intelligent,  spiritual-minded  woman, 
who  not  only  understands  the  principles  she  is  inter- 
preting, but  the  living,  breathing,  faulty,  wonderful, 
human  creatures  under  her  care. 


THE   CHILDREX'S   GUILD   OF  PLAY. 

"A  great  historian  many  centuries  ago  wrote  it  do\ATi 
that  the  first  things  conquered  in  battle  are  the  eyes;  tlie 
soldier  flees  from  what  he  sees  before.  But  so  often  in 
the  world's  fight  we  are  defeated  by  what  we  look  back 
upon;  we  are  whipped  in  the  end  by  the  things  we  saw  in 
the   beginning   of   life." 

— James   Lane   Allen. 

Life  is  so  dreary  in  the  slums ;  poverty  so  crushing- 
there.  Your  own  lacks  and  pains  and  discomforts  are 
multiplied  by  the  lacks  and  pains  and  discomforts  in 
all  the  other  beehive  cells  pressing  upon  yours,  till  you 
feel  the  many-sided  weight  to  the  very  center  of  your 
being. 

Poverty  in  the  country,  where  at  least  you  are  not 
scanted  of  air  and  space  and  quiet,  is  scarcely  poverty 
at  all;  it  is  deprivation,  but  neither  stunting  nor 
suffocation.  A  country  child,  though  he  tramp  by 
the  side  of  a  gypsy  or  beggar,  or  house  at  night,  half 
fed,  half  covered,  in  a  tuml)Ie-down  hovel,  is  not, 
after  all,  so  much  to  be  pitied  if  he  have  his  freedom. 
That  outdoor  play-school  which  ]\Iaurice  Thompson 
talks  of, — the  school  of  the  woods,  the  fields,  the  hills, 
the  streams ;  the  school  from  which  the  greatest  think- 
ers of  the  world  have  been  graduated, — this,  at  least, 
is  open  to  him,  without  money  and  without  price.  It 
is  the  education  in  ideality,  which  such  tuition  gives, 
which  is  the  great  lack  of  our  poor  city  children,  and 


42  THE  MESSAGE  OF  FROEBEL. 

tills  wliicli  it  seems  essential  to  supply  to  them,  in  so 
far  as  our  limited  knowledge  and  powers  admit. 

Contrast  the  play-school  of  nature  with  the  play- 
school of  man,  which  is  naturally  and  inevitably  the 
street,  and  weigh  one  against  the  other, — the  train- 
ing given  by  each. 

Plato,  in  his  '"Republic,"  plans  his  system  of  edu- 
cation so  that  the  first  twenty  years  of  every  human 
life  shall  be  in  the  main  devoted  to  a  nurture  of  the 
aliiding,  deejDcr,  greater  self,  that  it  may  become  easily 
the  master  over  the  other,  the  transient  self.  It  is 
to  be  a  training  of  the  unconscious  sort;  such  a  feed- 
ing of  the  young  mind  and  the  young  heart  that  they 
shall  come  to  love  above  all  things  those  which  are 
honorable  and  intrinsically  lovable,  and  to  hate  those 
which  are  dishonoral)le  and  unlovable;  so  to  feed 
this  under  self  that  at  length  it  becomes  the  master- 
ful self. 

We  need  not  pause  here  to  inquire  whether  or  not 
it  would  be  possible  to  regulate  for  such  a  length  of 
time  all  the  influences  surrounding  the  young  human 
creature;  or,  even  if  it  were  possil^le,  whether  we 
should  be  sufficiently  daring  to  make  the  attempt. 
It  is  practical  and  timely,  however,  to  inquire  for 
ourselves  just  what  sort  of  an  unconscious  training  is 
given  by  the  play-school  of  the  street,  and  endeavor 
to  supply  to  its  pupils,  as  best  we  may,  some  of  its 
most  glaring  deficiencies.  That  such  schooling  is  al- 
together evil  no  one  for  a  moment  supposes.  Lessons 
in  patience,  courage,  generosity,  and  sympathy   are 


THE    children's    GUILD    OF    PLAY.  43 

often  set  there  for  those  who  are  apt  at  learning.  But 
the  atmosphere  is  confused,  nois}^  full  of  ugly,  often 
brutal,  sights  and  sounds,  harsh,  sordid,  and  greatly 
lacking  in  reach,  insight,  vision,  and  ideality. 

It  is  in  the  endeavor  to  supply  some  of  these  ele- 
ments, to  touch  the  imagination  and  the  heart  as  well 
as  train  the  body,  that  the  Children's  Guild  of  Play 
has  been  organized  in  London ;  and  because  many  of 
the  ideas  which  it  is  working  out  are  true  and  valuable 
ones,  it  is  here  described,  as  a  contribution  toward 
the  settlement  of  one  of  the  vexed  questions  of  great 
■cities.  The  founder  of  the  Guild,  Sister  Grace  of  the 
Bermondsey  Settlement,  South  London,  says  that  it 
was  started  "as  an  attempt  to  solve  the  problem  of 
giving  the  children  of  our  slums  a  chance  of  a  cleaner 
life  than  would  seem  to  be  their  lot  by  inheritance." 
Its  proceedings  include  not  only  games,  singing,  and 
music,  but  the  telling  of  fairy  tales;  its  meetings  are 
held  on  one  evening  in  each  week,  and  it  is  generally 
found  that  the  managers  of  Board-schools  are  willing 
to  throw  open  one  or  more  of  their  rooms  for  these 
occasions,  thus  avoiding  the  expense  of  rent. 

The  Bermondsey  Settlement  Guild  is  managed  by 
three  workers, — musician,  play-mistress,  and  story- 
teller,— and  the  exercises  are  conducted  as  follows : 
""Our  Guild-evening,"  says  Sister  Grace,  "begins  with 
the  opening  of  the  doors,  when  little  girl  children  of 
all  ages  march  in  two  by  two.  Sometimes  they  may 
have  been  waiting  outside  in  fog  or  rain  for  an  hour 
l)eforehand.      After   everv    one    has    made    a    curtsev 


44  THE  MESSAGE  OF  FROEBEL. 

and  said  'Good  evening,'  the  games  begin — quaint  old 
English  song-games,  with  pretty  words,  rhythmic 
tunes,  and  daint}'  gestures;  and  then  come  fairy  tales 
and  songs — the  three  together  providing  continual 
motion  for  restless  limbs,  voices,  and  brains.  And 
before  we  go  away  we  kneel  together  for  the  beautiful 
closing  prayers  and  benediction.    That  is  all.'' 

The  Guild  has  no  punishments  save  those  which 
follow  as  the  natural  penalties  of  broken  laws,  no 
rewards  save  that  greatest  of  all  pleasures,  the  work- 
ing for  others.  There  are  no  buns  or  oranges,  no 
costly  toys,  no  magic-lantern  shows,  no  direct  religious 
teaching;  there  is  not  even  the  giving  away  of  useful 
information;  while  the  highest  prize  ever  offered  is 
the  privilege  of  being  allowed  to  go  and  play  before 
the  children's  own  parents,  or  before  old  people  in  the 
workhouse  or  infirmary. 

It  is  intended  that  the  Guild  of  Play  shall  supple- 
ment the  brain-training  of  the  day  school,'  and  it  is 
considered  essential  that  every  helper  should  personally 
know,  and  thus  be  able  to  co-operate  with,  the  teachers 
of  all  her  play-hour  children.  "The  benefits  arising 
from  such  co-operation  will  not  be  all  with  the  chil- 
dren," says  the  Guild,  "nor,  as  regards  teachers  and 
helpers,  will  they  be  one-sided.  Such  comradeship  is 
truest  socialism ;  such  workers  truly  are  pioneers  in 
the  great  march  of  the  coming  century." 

There  is  nothing  new,  it  may  be  said  in  passing, 
in  the  use  of  music,  singing,  and  games  as  instruments 
of  education.     Plato,  Aristotle,  Quintilian,  Comenius, 


THE    children's    GUILD    OF    PLAY.  45 

Eousseaii,  Fichte,  Pcstalozzi,  Locke,  Spencer,  Richter, 
and  Froebel,  all  had  many  wise  things  to  say  about 
them;  and  if,  in  the  endeavor  to  establish  a  Guild  of 
Play,  we  meet  persons  unwilling  to  contribute  to  our 
needs  because  doubtful  of  the  benefits  accruing,  we 
may  batter  down  their  walls  of  prejudice  with  argu- 
ments drawn  from  the  pages  of  these  great  philos- 
ophers. 

The  act  of  singing  in  itself  is  a  healthful  one, 
setting  the  chest  to  work,  expanding  the  lungs,  and 
making  the  blood  course  through  the  veins  with  double 
force,  while  the  gestures  and  rhythmic  activities  at- 
tendant upon  the  plays  are  most  valuable  for  the 
modern  child  who  is  constrained  to  stillness  in  the 
schoolroom  for  so  many  hours  of  each  day. 

Modern  life  tends  everywhere  to  the  hiving  together 
in  cities  and  the  results  are  seen  in  the  great  increase 
of  nervous  disorders.  That  these  ailments  are  present 
in  the  bud  in  many  of  the  pupils  of  our  metropolitan 
public  schools  will  be  attested  by  any  physician  who 
has  made  a  study  of  them,  and  oftentimes  they 
are  so  well  advanced  as  to  render  a  cure  a  matter  of 
considerable  difficulty.  "By  i)rolonging  the  period 
of  play,"  as  one  of  its  best  advocates  has  said,  "we 
shall  bo  providing  a  counter! )alance  for  this  tendency." 

"The  need  of  muscle-culture  in  our  great  citie.=? 
is  an  imperative  one,"  says  George  E.  Johnson,  in 
his  monograph  on  (^ames  and  Play;  and  rhythmic 
movement  in  part  supplies  this  need.  It  is  clear,  too, 
that  children  cannot  engage  in  these  singing  games 


46  TflE  MESSAGE  OF   FROEBEL. 

without  learning  many  lessons  in  self-control  and 
comradeship,  and  these  are  valuable  qualities,  useful 
every  day  in  life.  The  imagination  must  also  be 
trained  and  the  a?sthetic  faculties  cultivated  l)y  play 
and  story-telling,  and  such  training  is  of  necessity 
altogether  absent  in  the  education  of  the  ordinary 
street  child.  Ue  is  precocious,  poor  infant  phenom- 
enon, in  all  that  concerns  the  practical,  while  the 
ideal  in  him,  his  powers  of  loving  and  dreaming,  are 
crushed  and  pallid  like  the  growing  things  under  a 
stone.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  carefully  selected  fairy 
tales,  and  fairy  tales  only,  are  told  to  the  children  of 
the  Guilds,  for,  as  Sister  Grace  quotes  most  appro- 
priately, "where  there  is  no  vision,  the  people  perish."' 
"A  child  without  imagination,"  she  goes  on  to  say, 
'"will  become  a  man  without  ideals,  with  narrow  sym- 
pathies here,  and  little  interest  or  treasure  in  the  great 
Unknown  Land.  Wherefore  let  us  kindle  imagina- 
tion ;  and  for  this  purpose  we  know  of  no  better  in- 
struments than  fairy  tales." 

The  children  are  happy  on  these  golden  evenings 
of  song  and  play  and  story,  as  we  well  may  fancy; 
and  happiness  is  not  only  their  right  but  their  neces- 
sity if  they  are  to  develop  properly  in  mind,  soul,  and 
body.  It  is  surely  not  much  to  ask  of  those  who  have 
everything  in  life  which  these  little  ones  lack,  that  they 
should  give  an  hour  or  two  a  week  of  their  leisure  to 
a  service  of  love,  such  as  the  Guild  of  Play. 

It  may  be  that  American  guilds  would  be  con- 
ducted on  different  lines,  in  some  respects,  from  those 


THE     CIIILDREXS    GUILD    OF    PLAT.  47 

of  the  Bermondsey  Settlement.  There  seems  no 
reason,  for  instance,  why  boys  as  well  as  girls  should 
not  have  the  benefit  of  games  and  singing,  though 
their  organizations  might  not  be  conducted  in  the 
same  M'ay.  It  would  seem  probable,  too,  that  plays 
might  Ix'  found  superior  to  the  old  English  singing 
games  in  some  respects,  and  full  as  rich  in  the  desired 
elements  of  repetition,  succession,  sequence,  dialogue, 
rhj'thm,  and  rhyme.  And  when  the  children  have 
grown  to  know  one  another  and  to  feel  the  influence 
of  their  leader,  we  may  plainly  see  that  all  the  ends 
Ave  are  striving  to  gain  would  be  more  easily  attained 
by  a  country  play-hour  when  weather  and  season  are 
favorable.  Although  the  trolley  seems  to  some  of  us 
an  impertinent  attack  upon  the  retirement  of  rural 
life  and  a  noisy,  vexatious  interruption  to  quiet  and 
seclusion,  yet  it  cannot  be  denied  that  it  takes  away 
from  him  who  hath  to  give  to  him  who  hath  not  and  so 
is  one  factor  among  the  great  leveling  tendencies  of 
modern  social  conditions. 

Thousands  of  green  fields  are  now  easily  and 
cheaply  accessible  to  the  dwellers  in  great  cities  where 
a  few  years  ago  they  were  only  to  be  readied  by  horse 
or  bicycle  power  and  thus  we  may,  with  very  little 
expenditure  of  time  or  money,  transport  our  Guilds 
to  the  country  since  the  country  cannot  come  to  them. 

Again,  when  we  consider  the  literary  side  of  the 
undertaking,  there  are  numl)erless  stories  and  poems, 
outside  of  the  realm  of  fairy-lore,  which  would  serve 
our   purposes   occasionally,    but    these   are   variations 


48  THE  MESSAGE  OF   EROEBEI-. 

iij)on  the  original  theme  wliieh  would  occur  to  any- 
one who  was  sufficiently  interested  in  it,  and  when 
all  is  said,  it  is  the  spirit  of  the  enterprise  which  will 
be  found  to  be  its  important  element. 

It  is  vitally  important,  too,  that  the  right  kind  of 
persons  should  manage  the  Play  Guilds.  The  work  is 
not  for  teachers  worn  out  with  the  nervous  strain  of 
the  day;  it  is  not  for  the  toilers  either  among  men 
or  women  :  it  is  for  those  who  are  fresh,  bright,  joyous, 
unworn  liy  care  or  labor,  whoso  own  sheltered  youth 
and  prolonged  opportunities  for  many  kinds  of  play 
have  preserved  in  them  their  vigor  and  optimism  and 
who  can  lift  the  children  above  the  pressure  of  the 
street  on  the  wings  of  their  own  life-joy. 


THE  GUILD  OF  THE  BRAVE  POOR  THmGS. 

"It  is  to  be  called  the  Book  of  Poor  Things,  mother  dear. 
It 's  a  collection — a  collection  of  Poor  Things  who  "ve  been 
hurt,  like  me;  or  blind,  like  the  organ- tuner;  or  had  their 
legs  or  their  arms  chopped  off  in  battle,  and  are  A'ery  good 
and  brave  about  it,  and  manage  very,  very  nearly  as  well 
as  people  who  have  got  nothing  the  matter  with  them. 
Father  does  n't  think  Poor  Things  is  a  good  name.  He 
wanted  to  call  it  Masters  of  Fate,  because  of  some  poetry. 
What  was  it,  father?" 

"  'Man  is  man,  and  master  of  his  fate,'  "  quoted  the 
Master  of  the  House. 

"Yes,  that 's  it.  But  I  don't  vmderstand  it  so  well  as  Poor 
Things.  They  are  Poor  Things,  you  know,  and  of  course 
we  shall  only  put  in  brave  Poor  Things,  not  cowardly  Poor 
Things." 

If  you  ever  happened  to  meet  a  little  lad  named 
Leonard,  Avho  lives  in  the  pages  of  ]\Irs.  Ewing's 
"Story  of  a  Short  Life.""  then  you  will  remember,  with 
misty  eyes  and  an  ache  in  the  throat,  that  chapter 
wherein  the  hero  directs  from  his  wheeled  chair  the 
ruling  and  printing  and  illuminating  of  his  Book  of 
Brave   Poor   Tilings. 

The  child  has  been  the  victim  of  an  accident, 
which  not  only  makes  him  a  cripple,  l)ut  racks  him 
with  distress  and  ])ain.  and,  under  the  nervous  strain 
of  the  affliction  and  the  consequent  "spoiling,"'  he  has 
become  capricious,  tyrannical,  a  torment  to  himself 
and  to  others.  Fortunately,  Avhen  things  have  reached 
a  climax  of  wretchedness,  his  wise  mother  comes  to 


50  THE  MESSAGE  OF   FKOEBEL. 

the  rescue,  and.  appealing  to  the  boy's  courage,  his 
sense  of  honor,  and  to  his  passionate  interest  in  soldiers 
and  soldierly  qualities,  teaches  him  that,  though 
a  military  life  can  never  now  be  his,  he  yet  may  be 
"a  brave  cripple."  The  ancestral  motto  of  the  family, 
Laetiis  sorte  men.  is  so  interpreted  to  the  child  that  he 
grows  to  feel  it  a  nuitter  of  duty  to  be  happy  with  his 
fate,  and  l)egins  to  think  that  perhaps  there  are  '"lots 
of  brave  afflicted  people,  and  perhaps  there  never  was 
anybody  but  him  who  was  n't  so." 

Leonard  has  a  touching  interview  with  a  hero 
of  the  Victoria  Cross,  in  which,  true  to  his  great  life- 
interest,  he  is  intent  on  finding  out  whether,  if  he 
is  very  good  and  patient  about  a  lot  of  pain  in  his  back 
and  his  head,  that  would  count  up  to  be  as  brave  as 
having  one  wound  if  he  "d  been  a  soldier;  and  whether 
being  ill  in  bed  might  count  like  being  a  soldier  in  a 
hospital. 

''I  suppose  nothing — not  even  if  I  could  be  good 
always,  from  this  minute  right  away  till  I  die — noth- 
ing could  ever  count  up  to  the  courage  of  a  Y.  C.  ?" 
questions  the  boy,  wistfully ;  and  the  brave,  tender- 
hearted wearer  of  the  priceless  bit  of  iron  answers 
tremulously,  "God  knows  it  could,  a  thousand  times 
over !"' 

Leonard,  and  the  Book  wliich  he  thought  out  so 
carefully,  suggested  to  Sister  Grace  the  formation  in 
the  Bermondsey  Settlement,  South  London,  of  the 
Guild  of  the  Brave  Poor  Things.  It  is  an  association 
of  men,  women,   and  children,   of   any   creed   or  no 


TTIE    GUILD    OP    THE    BRAVE    POOR    THIXGS.  51 

creed,  who  are  crippled,  Ijlind,  or  maimed  in  any  way. 
Anyone  is  eligible  for  membership  if  thus  afflicted 
and  if  at  the  same  time  he  is  resolved  to  make  a  good 
fight  in  life.  Laetus  sorte  men,  Happy  in  my  Lot,  is 
the  watchword  of  the  Guild;  and  its  hymn,  the  one 
which  Mrs.  Ewing's  hero  called  the  Tug-of-War  hymn, 
because,  at  the  military  chapel  which  he  often  at- 
tended, the  soldiers  sang  the  verse  beginning,  "A  noble 
army,  men  and  boys,"  with  such  tremendous  impetus 
and  vigor  that,  after  a  brief  contest,  they  invariably 
pulled  away  from  the  organ  and  the  whole  choir. 

The  deepest  purpose  of  the  Guild,  says  Sister 
Grace,  is  found  in  this  verse  of  the  hymn: 

"Who   best    can   diink    His   cup   of   woe. 
Triumphant  over   pain ; 
Who  patient  bears  His  Cross  below, 
He   follows   in   His   train." 

It  is  by  "awakening  the  heroic  that  slumbers  in 
every  heart,"  and  by  teaching  its  members  that  the 
courage  to  bear  and  the  courage  to  dare  are  really  one 
and  the  same,  that  the  Guild  lives  up  to  its  motto ;  for 
its  founder  believes  that  it  is  not  enough  patiently  to 
accept  one's  life-burden,  but  that  one  must  also  learn 
to  bear  it  cheerfully.  If  it  be  heavy  it  is  all  the  more  a 
proof  of  strength  and  valor  to  support  its  weight  brave- 
ly and  in  such  fashion  that  each  soldier  in  the  suffering 
army  may  profit  by  the  spirit  and  enthusiasm  of  the 
comrade  marching  by  his  side. 

It  is  inherent  in  the  very  idea  of  the  Guild  that 


53  THE  MESSAGE  OF   FROEBEL. 

it  should  ])r\nir.  light  and  brightness  into  cold,  graj' 
lives;  and  so,  in  every  room  in  which  it  meets,  the 
walls  are  draped  with  the  Union  Jack,  and  high  above 
shines  out  in  Ijrilliant  scarlet  letters  the  watchword, 
Laetus  sorie  niea.  There  are  badges,  membership 
cards,  and  banners,  all  in  red,  the  soldier's  color,  and 
the  true  military  spirit  is  insisted  upon  in  every  way. 

"It  is  important,"  says  Sister  Grace,  "to  guard 
against  anything  like  a  sentimental  glorification  of 
suffering;  and,  to  shut  out  such  a  possibility,  the 
Guild  must  have  a  knowledge  of  the  conditions  of 
life  of  all  its  members,  and  must  be  ready  to  do  every- 
thing that  can  be  done  to  minimize  their  actual 
distresses."  It  is  not  a  charity,  however,  and  does  not 
give  relief;  it  is  merely  a  friendly  organization  of 
afflicted  persons  meeting  frequently  with  leaders  who 
are  interested  in  their  troubles  and  who  can  give 
strength  and  courage  to  bear  tliem  more  bravely. 
Where  relief  must  be  given,  it  is  done  through  other 
societies,  and  so  there  is  no  asking  nor  giving  here, 
save  in  the  things  of  the  spirit. 

The  Guild  of  Brave  Poor  Things  was  organized 
in  1894,  and  so  great  a  need  has  it  apparently  met, 
and  so  well  has  it  taken  advantage  of  the  "together" 
spirit  of  the  age,  that  it  now  has  six  branches,  with 
a  membership  of  more  than  five  hundred.  It  is  a 
pitiful  thought  that  there  are  so  many  persons  in  one 
locality  who  belong  by  right  to  such  a  club,  but  even 
more  pitiful  would  it  be  were  nothing  done  to  lighten 
their  doulile  woes  of  poverty  and  disease. 


TME    GUILD    OF    THE    BRAVE    POOR    THINGS.  53 

The  various  things  necessary  to  a  successful  con- 
duct of  the  Guild  are  thus  stated  ])v  Sister  Grace : 

1.  To  visit  members  in  their  own  homes  and 
establish  personal  linl<s  between  the  workers  and  mem- 
bers. 

2.  To  hold  regular  meetings  at  stated  intervals 
for  games,  singing,  and  social  intercourse. 

3.  To  bring,  as  far  as  possible,  technical  classes 
and  suitable  lectures  within  the  reach  of  members  of 
the  Guild ;  to  arrange  for  periodical  excursions,  con- 
certs, etc.,  for  them,  together  with  any  other  means  of 
widening  their  necessarily  restricted  lives. 

The  Guild's  rules  are  few  and  simple: '  merely  that 
the  name,  motto,  and  hymn  shall  be  the  same  in  all 
hranches,  that  flags  shall  always  be  used  in  the  decora- 
tion of  the  rooms,  that  the  soldierly  virtues  of  loyalty 
and  prompt  obedience  be  cultivated  in  every  way,  and 
that  records  be  kept  of  the  name,  address,  and  condi- 
tion of  each  member. 

And  what  are  Tlie  proceedings  at  the  Guild  meet- 
ings? you  ask. 

These  may  be  held  either  in  the  afternoon  or  even- 
ing, and  so  great  is  the  interest  in  them  that  many 
of  the  members  gather  at  the  entrance  long  before 
opening  time,  reminding  one  of  that  even  in  Caper- 
naum when  the  sun  did  set  and  when  they  brought 
unto  Him  all  that  were  sick  of  divers  diseases,  and 
all  the  city  was  gathered  together  at  the  door. 

There  are  blind  people  here ;  there  are  deaf-mutes ; 
there  are  paralytics  v/ho  can  drag  themselves  along. 


51  THE  :mess-^ge  of  froebel. 

and  otlu'i's  wlio  must  be  puslied  in  chairs  or  peram- 
bulators ;  there  are  as  many  phases  of  distress  and 
deformity,  perhaps,  as  there  are  persons,  and  all  ages 
are  represented:  but  there  is  mneh  good-fellowship, 
and  constant  helpfulness. 

Tables  are  set  in  the  Guild-room,  where  books  and 
])apors  and  magazines  are  scattered  for  those  of  seeing 
eyes ;  there  is  a  piano  for  the  blind ;  there  is  a  lending 
library  from  which  books  may  be  taken  home;  there 
are  toys  for  the  younger  children ;  and  there  is  always 
a  painting  table,  for  it  seems  that  mottoes  and  pic- 
tures to  color  are  in  great  demand  the  year  around. 

^lany  of  the  1)1  ind  women  bring  their  knitting  or 
other  handiwork  and  chat  quietly  together  as  their 
busy  fingers  move ;  the  men  fall  into  conversation  over 
the  games  and  pictures,  and  thus  the  grace  of  friend- 
ship is  added  to  these  lives  of  deprivation  and  suffer- 
ing. 

In  many  of  the  Guilds  weekly  half-hour  lectures 
on  science,  history,  and  travel  are  given,  and  seem  to 
be  greatly  enjoyed ;  and  always  when  games  and  lec- 
tures and  conversation  are  over  there  is  the  ever- 
delightful  singing  practice.  If  any  of  the  members 
are  found  to  have  special  musical  ability,  or  a  knack  at 
recitation,  they  are  encouraged  to  help  in  entertain- 
ment, and  considerable  talent  is  thus  discovered  and 
a  new  value  given  to  the  self-estimate  of  the  possessor. 

At  the  close  of  the  exercises  the  roll  is  always 
called,  each  soldier  of  the  army,  from  baby  to  gray- 
beard,  answering  to  his  name,  and  then  comes  Leon- 


THE    GUILD*  OF    THE    BRAVE    POOR    THINGS.  55 

ard's  "'Tug-of-War"  hymn,  for  which  all  stand,  or  at 
least  assume  as  nearly  erect  a  position  as  weak  limbs 
and  twisted  spines  will  allow. 

It  is  their  battle-hymn,  and  if  with  its  echoes  ring- 
ing in  their  ears  they  can  go  back  to  their  poor  homes 
and  quit  themselves  like  men,  if  they  can  fly  their 
scarlet  banner  with  its  joyous  motto,  if  they  can  fight 
the  battle  of  life  with  courage,  heavily  weighted  as  they 
are,  then  indeed  may  they  be  called  the  bravest  army 
that  ever  went  forth  to  warfare. 


THE  SOCIAL  INCLOSUEE  OF  CHILDHOOD. 

"It  is  not  only  likely — it  is  inevitable— that  the  child 
make  up  his  personality,  under  limitations  of  heredity,  by 
imitation,  out  of  the  'copy'  set  in  the  actions,  temper, 
emotions,  of  the  persons  who  build  around  him  the  social 
inelosure   of   his   childhood." 

—J.  21.  Bahhcin. 

There  is  an  old  Spanish  proverb  whicli  runs,  ''Tell 
me  with  whom  thou  walkest  ■  and  I  will  tell  thee  who 
thou  art,"  and  if  we  were  to  invent  a  game  calling  for 
pithy  sayings  from  all  languages  on  any  given  subject 
we  should  probably  find  that  the  greatest  number 
would  cluster  about  the  influence  of  companionship. 
We  need  no  further  proof  that  the  topic  has  always 
been  prominent  in  the  attention  of  men  and  we 
may  easily  conjecture  that  the  nucleus  of  thought  on 
the  subject  came  from  arlwreal  foremothers  who 
plucked  their  offspring  away  from  undesirable  play- 
mates and,  as  they  tossed  them  into  their  own  trees, 
sharply  queried  why  they  never  could  be  content  at 
home. 

Rousseau  felt  so  strongly  that  out  of  the  three 
educations  which  life  brings  to  us, — the  education 
of  nature,  circumstances,  and  other  men, — only  tlie 
last  could  be  partially  controlled,  that  he  proposed,  as 
you  remember,  absolutely  to  isolate  his  "Emile"  from 
the  rest  of  the  world. 

This   idea   is   of   course   quite   imjiracticable   and. 


58  THE  MESSAGE  OF  FROEBEL. 

even  if  it  were  not  so,  would  be  undesirable,  for  it  is 
not  so  much  the  object  of  education  to  keep  the  human 
being  away  from  temptation  as  to  render  him  proof 
against  it.  It  never  was  of  any  use,  you  know,  to  M'all 
the  princess  up  in  the  high  stone  tower,  for  the  prince 
always  came  that  way,  and  when  other  means  of  ingress 
failed  ho  climbed  up  the  golden  ladder  of  her  braided 
locks. 

To  keep  children  away  from  companionship  is 
impossible,  and  the  only  course  remaining  is  to  see 
that  it  be  of  the  best.  The  modern  demands  of 
education  require  the  mother  to  be  so  Argus-eyed  that 
it  is  no  wonder  if  she  misses  seeing  something  now 
and  then  in  one  and  another  direction,  but  if  she 
is  sightless  or  of  weak  vision  here,  the  matter  is  a 
serious  one.  It  is  difficult  to  realize  perhaps  that  the 
flaxen-haired,  blue-ginghamed  dumpling  "playing 
house"  with  your  daughter  over  there  can  be  any 
more  important  in  her  influence  than  the  robin  that 
sings  in  the  bough  above  them,  but  if  you  think  so  you 
will  be  mistaken, — seriously,  perhaps  fatally,  mis- 
taken. Little  Blue  Gingham  may  easily,  if  she  have 
time  enough,  taint  your  child's  mind  for  life,  and  the 
taint  will  be  the  more  enduring  if  the  mind  be  an 
imaginative  one.  She  may  implant  vicious  thoughts, 
ideas,  and  images  there,  which  it  will  require  years 
of  struggle  to  drive  out,  or  rather  to  suppress,  for  they 
can  never  be  altogether  driven  out.  You  are  thought- 
less of  danger  because  you  know  the  inheritance  of 
vour  own  child  and  know  that  she  is  flower-like  in 


THE    SOCIAL    IXCLOSURE    OF    CHILDHOOD.  59 

pu^it3^  How  much  do  you  know  of  little  Blue  Ging- 
ham, pray,  that  you  leave  the  two  children  together 
those  long  uninterrupted  hours? 

It  is  a  much-discussed  question  whether  parents 
should  choose  their  children's  companions  for  them, 
or  allow  them  to  make  their  own  selection.  Certain!}^ 
the  latter,  we  would  say  upon  reflection,  proper  sur- 
veillance being  afterwards  exercised  upon  the  chosen 
friend  and  upon  his  influence.  It  is  to  be  remembered 
that  these  boys  and  girls  of  ours,  tiny  as  they  may  be, 
are  already  possessed  of  independent  individualities 
and  have  their  own  fancies  and  characteristics.  It  is 
by  no  means  to  be  assumed  that  their  tastes  in  person- 
ality are  the  same  as  our  own,  and  when  we  select  some 
neat  and  proper  "Miss  Xancy"  and  present  him  to 
Jack  as  "such  a  sweet  little  playfellow"  it  is  not  un- 
likely that  Jack  will  find  him  intolerably  dull  and 
prefer  the  company  of  Patsy  Hogan  over  in  the  alley. 
And  we  should  reflect,  before  we  send  Patsy  flying 
home,  that  though  he  be  neither  any  too  clean,  nor  his 
clothing  any  too  whole,  yet  he  may  after  all  be  a  better 
bo}'  than  Miss  Xancy  and  have  a  better  influence. 

Xo,  it  is  inevitable  that  the  child  should  commonly 
find  his  companions  in  the  families  of  those  who  build 
his  social  inclosure  about  him,  but  within  those  limits 
let  him  do  his  own  selecting  and  see  only  that  you 
watch  the  playmate  carefully,  as  well  as  the  influence 
he  is  exerting. 

The  little  child  is  daily  creating  himself  from 
the  material  about  him  and  it  is,  as  Emerson  said,  the 


GO  THE  MESSAGE  OF  FROEBEL. 

things  of  which  he  is  not  thinking  that  are  educating 
him.  If  the  mother  can  supply  him  with  good  models 
at  this  juncture  Froebel  tells  us  that  she  can  accom- 
plish In-  a  touch  light  as  a  feather  what  later  she  could 
hardly  do  by  a  hundredweight  of  words.  The  child 
must  imitate,  he  can  only  grow  l)y  imitation,  there- 
fore observe  him  closely  and  note  the  unfolding  of 
his  nature  and  the  possibilities  for  good  or  evil  that 
it  discloses. 

Von  may  think  if  the  evil  tendencies  are  there, 
tliat  he  will  inevitably  develop  them  sooner  or  later, 
no  mattiT  what  influences  surroimd  him  now.  Xot 
at  all.  So  long  as  the  earth  rolls  the  Jack  will  never 
come  out  of  the  box  unless  you  loosen  the  cover,  and 
if  he  stays  down  in  the  dark  long  enough  his  mechan- 
ism will  so  rust  that  he  cannot  jump  at  all. 

Give  serious  attention  to  the  child's  playfellows 
then,  watcli  their  effect  in  his  speech  and  in  his  temper 
and  mannerisms,  and  keep  so  close  to  his  heart  that 
he  is  willing  to  tell  you  something  of  his  thoughts  and 
feelings.  In  no  other  way  can  you  so  protect  him  from 
evil  and  give  him  a  bias  toward  good  as  in  providing 
him  with  the  right  companions. 

And  are  these  only  to  l)e  found  among  other  chil- 
dren? you  ask.  Ah  no,  the  matter  is  not  so  simple  a 
one  as  that.  The  growing  human  being  needs  the 
companionship  of  nature  as  well,  the  sweet  influence 
of  trees  and  birds  and  winds  and  the  sense  of  respon- 
sibility and  tenderness  engendered  in  his  heart  by  the 
dependence  of  his  pets  upon  him. 


THE    SOCIAL    IXCLOSURE    OF    CHILDHOOD.  61 

Later,  when  the  mysteries  of  the  printed  page  are 
opened  to  him,  the  papers  and  magazines  and  books 
which  he  reads  are  wisely  to  be  selected;  and  here  is 
a  potent  influence  for  good  or  evil  not  snflficiently 
considered.  Search  your  own  recollections  and  consult 
child-students  of  to-day  in  choosing  this  literature, 
for  there  are  certain  ages  which  imperiously  demand 
certain  kinds  of  reading  and  will  have  it  by  one  means 
or  another.  If  the  boy  of  eight  to  ten  years  cannot  get 
"Robinson  Crusoe,"  or  "The  Jungle  Books,""  he  will 
read  the  adventures  of  "Red. Dog,  Blue  Horse  and 
Grhost-that-lies-in-the-Wood,"'  and  learn  to  content 
himself  with  Brummagem  jewelry  when  he  might 
have  had  pure  gems  of  radiance  and  color. 

And  when  we  have  done  all  these  things  so  far  as 
our  limited  knowledge  admits,  shall  we  not  think  of 
the  child's » earliest,  best,  nearest  companions,  those 
whose  faces  are  the  first  he  sees,  whose  hands  the  first 
he  grasps,  whose  words  the  first  he  understands,  whose 
lives  encompass  him  as  the  blue  depths  the  star?  If 
aught  be  amiss  with  this  dear  companionship,  rough 
is  the  road  for  childish  feet  to  clim'l)  and  dark  indeed 
the  skies  that  bend  above  the  little  pilgrim. 

Underneath  all  other  friendships  this  rests  firm, 
strong  and  steadfast  and  as  the  dewdrop  exhales  from 
the  sea  to  wander  above  in  independent  life,  but  still 
returns  at  last  to  mingle  with  the  waters  that  gave  it 
birth,  so  the  child-heart,  after  each  new  journey  into 
the  unknown,  slips  back  again  into  the  great  profound 
of  father  and  mother  love. 


DAME  XATUPtE'S  PLAY-SCHOOL. 

"If  so  the  swiftness  of  the  wind 
Might  pass  into  my  feet ; 
If  so  the  sweetness  of  the  wlieat 
Into  my  soul  might  pass, 
And  the  clear  courage  of  the  grass." 

—A'.  R.   Sill. 

"Every  third  generation  should  be  rolled  in  the 
dust,"  said  Henry  Ward  Beecher ;  and  the  great  divine 
was  right  in  this,  as  in  many  anotlier  thing,  whether 
he  meant  that  the  race  needs  frequently  to  go  Ijack  to 
first  principles  and  l^egin  over  again,  or  whether  he 
thought  only  of  the  Herculean  myth  and  the  strength 
the  earth  gives  out  to  those  who  lean  upon  her  bosom. 

As  the  love  of  nature  was  the  dominant  passion 
of  the  primitive  world,  so  it  lives  again  in  the  little 
child,  who  is  ever  re-making  history  in  his  own  per- 
sonality. He  is  a  natural  tiller  of  the  ground,  a 
natural  observer  and  collector,  and  all  he  needs  is  op- 
portunity, a  hint  of  encouragement,  and  a  word  of 
direction,  to  mount  these  hobbies  and  gallop  bravely 
off  on  all  sorts  of  delightful  and  profitable  journeys. 

For  once  in  the  year,  at  least,  many  children  are 
given  the  key  of  the  fields,  or  the  freedom  of  the 
seashore  and,  overcome  by  the  possibilities  before 
them,  stand  uncertain  w^hat  to  do.  Xor  are  their  small 
country  cousins  prepared  to  lead  them  in  most  cases, 
for  children,  and  indeed  grown  persons,  wlio  live  in 


64  THE   MESSAGE   OF   FROEBEL. 

tlu'  vorv  midst  of  nature's  wonders,  often  go  about, 
like  falcons,  hooded  from  the  light. 

How  shall  we  teach  these  little  ones  to  see,  and 
what  shall  we  teach  tliem  to  do?  for  thej^  cannot  be 
hap})y,  even  in  vacation,  if  they  have  not  some  kind 
of  regular  employment.  Spring  and  summer  are  the 
golden  times  of  the  year  for  watching  living  and  grow- 
ing things,  for  investigation  and  experiment,  and 
there  is  no  better  way  to  compass  all  these  ends  than 
to  phiiit  and  tend  a  garden.  Give  the  child  a  small 
plot  of  ground  ready  spaded  and  dressed,  then,  and 
let  him  sow  a  few  hardy,  quick-growing  flower  and 
vegetable  seeds,  fencing  the  plot  afterwards,  watering 
and  weeding  it.  ^o  nuitter  if  he  only  sows  lettuce 
and  sunflowers,  his  products  will  still  combine  the 
useful  and  the  beautiful,  and  one  plant  is  as  good  as 
another  for  observing  tlie  wonders  of  germination  and 
growth. 

Teach  him  also  in  these  summer  days  how  to  pluck 
floM'crs,  cutting  them  carefully  with  proper  length 
of  stem,  and  by  leaving  a  few  specimens  on  each  plant 
securing  against  the  entire  extermination  of  the 
species.  The  natural  desire  of  the  child  seems  to  be 
to  tear  up  whole  families  and  plantations  of  flowers, 
roots  and  all,  with  one  fierce  tug,  a  desire  which,  grati- 
fied often,  soon  rids  a  country-side  of  its  natural  deco- 
rations as  effectually  as  if  fire  and  sword  had  been  laid 
to  them.  Gathered  in  such  careless  fashion  they  are  as 
carelessly  guarded,  and  one  frequently  knows  that  a 
junior  naturalists'  club  has  been  in  the  vicinity,  merely 


DAME    nature's    rLAY-SClIOOL.  65 

by  the  clusters  of  faded  blossoms  lying  in  the  dust  of 
the  roadway,  by  broken  branches,  trodden  leaves  and 
grass,  and  a  general  effect  in  once  flowery  nooks  and 
bowers  of  beauty  as  if  a  herd  of  wild  mustangs  on  the 
stampede  had  trampled  through  them. 

Children  need  commonly  to  learn  that  it  is  possible 
to  love  and  admire  a  flower,  indeed  to  study  it  and 
know  its  characteristics,  and  still  leave  it  on  the 
parent  stem.     As  Monekton  Milnes  said : — 

"Simply   enjoy   the   present   loveliness! 

Let  it  become  a  portion  of  your  being! 
Close  your  glad  gaze,  but  see  it  none  the  less ; 

Ko  clearer  with  your  eye,  than  spirit,  seeing. 
And  when  you  part  at  last,  turn  once  again. 

Swearing  that  beauty  shall  be  unforgot." 

When  this  lesson  has  been  mastered  and  the  furtlier 
one  of  handling  the  blossom  Respectfully  when  it  be- 
comes necessary  to  cut  it,  we  may,  if  large  gardens  or 
fields  of  wild  flowers  are  at  our  command,  instruct  our 
pupil  how  to  make  up  posies  for  hospital  or  flower 
mission  work,  and  even  before  he  attains  to  the  degree 
of  carefulness  and  dexterity  necessary  for  this  labor  of 
love,  he  may  be  engaged  as  a  helper  at  watering-time, 
a  little  inevitable  splashing  and  spilling  being  wisely 
overlooked. 

For  still  younger  children  there  are  many  delight- 
ful plays  with  materials  drawn  from  nature's  toy-shop. 
There  are  wreaths  and  garlands  to  be  made  of  leaves 
and  flowers;  there  are  chains  of  lilacs  and  dandelions 
and  daisies  and  four  o'clocks,  there  are  nuts  and  seeds 


66  THE  MESSAGE  OF   FROEBEL. 

to  be  strung,  there  are  dolls  of  popp}-  seed-cups  to  be 
dressed  and  tea-sets  to  be  made  from  the  same  ma- 
terials and  from  acorns.  Then  there  are  charming 
ladies  with  long  dresses  to  fashion  from  morning 
glories ;  tiny  leaf  hats  and  bonnets  to  be  fastened  to- 
gether with  thorns  and  twigs ;  furniture  to  be  made  of 
burdock  burrs;  rose  pancakes  to  mix,  rose  petals  to 
gather  for  potpourri;  mud  pies  to  bake  in  small  tins, 
and  leaves  and  twigs  and  ferns  to  press  into  wet  sand, 
making  attractive  designs  and  borders.  On  rainy  days 
the  leaves  and  ferns  nuiy  be  cut  from  green  paper  and 
mounted  on  cardboard ;  or,  if  there  is  a  clay  bank  near, 
tlie  licavier  ones  may  Ix'  im})ressed  upon  clay  plaques  of 
various  shapes  which  may  afterwards  be  baked  in  a  slow 
oven. 

The  study  of  the  birds  of  a  neighborhood  might 
occupy  every  waking  hour  of  a  whole  company  of 
children  for  an  entire  summer,  first  learning  to  watch 
them  quietly  and  unobtrusively,  either  with  their  own 
bright  eyes  or  with  an  opera-glass,  then  with  the  aid 
of  a  bird-book  becoming  acquainted  with  their  names ; 
next  studying  their  habits,  their  ways  of  nest-building, 
their  songs  and  calls,  their  special  services  to  man, 
and  making  as  thorough  an  investigation  as  may  be 
possible  of  their  favorite  foods.  If  an  older  person 
will  record  these  observations  of  the  children  they  may 
bQ  found  really  valuable  in  the  preservation  of  bird 
life,  and  a  remedy  may  thus  be  discovered  for  the 
startling  decrease  of  our  native  songsters  in  many 
parts  of  the  country. 


DAME    nature's    PLAY-SCHOOL.  67 

Dr.  C.  F.  Hodge  of  Clark  University,  who  is  an 
acknowledged  authority  on  the  subject,  tells  us  that 
during  the  last  fifteen  years  this  decrease  in  thirty  of 
our  states  and  territories  amounts  to  forty-six  per 
cent,  and  he  suggests  that  children  be  taught  to  make 
safe  places  of  shelter  and  bird-houses  for  their  feath- 
ered friends,  and  especially  to  provide  them  with  food 
in  bad  winters.  Their  houses  should  be  built  with 
perches  or  a  tiny  platform  below  each  door,  should  be 
made  of  proper  proportions  and  placed  at  a  safe  height 
from  the  ground.*  One  live  bijd.  Dr.  Hodge  calculates, 
may  be  worth  one  hundred  dollars  a  year  to  a  com- 
munity, so  considerations  of  economy  as  well  as  senti- 
ment may  well  urge  us  on  to  the  task  of  caring  for 
them.  Dr.  Hodge  also  suggests,  as  a  useful  autumn 
occupation  for  children,  that  they  be  taught  to  take  a 
census  each  season  of  the  birds  in  their  own  localities  by 
counting  the  nests  after  the  leaves  have  fallen.  Thus 
some  reliable  information  will  be  gathered  as  to  the 
gradual  increase  or  decrease  of  our  bird-neighbors  year 
by  year. 

Then  there  are  the  insects  to  be  studied,  the  valu- 
able little  ladybug  or  ladybird,  loved  by  all  children ; 
the  ants,  bees,  and  wasps ;  the  hornets,  spiders,  dragon 
flies,  and  l)utterflies;  the  potato  bugs  and  cucumber 
bugs  with  their  shining  striped  coats,  and  much  of 
real  importance  is  to  be  learned  as  to  their  food, 
their  time  of  appearance,  their  transformations,  and 


•For  plans,  proportions  and  designs,  see  Cornell  Nature  Study  Leaflets 
and  Bulletins,  No.  10,  April  10, 1898. 


G8  THE  MESSAGE  OE   FROEBEL. 

ilieir  ability  to  serve  or  injure  man.  If  we  knew  the 
true  relation  between  birds  and  insects  it  is  said  that 
we  could  entirely  transform  our  insect-ridden  land 
in  two  decades,  but  to  do  this,  authoritative  informa- 
tion must  be  disseminated.  Dr.  Hodge  makes  an 
interesting  calculation  on  this  subject.  "The  school 
system  of  the  United  States,"  he  says,  "costs  $420,- 
000,000  a  year,  while  authorities  on  the  subject  esti- 
mate that  insects  destroy  crops  to  the  value  of  between 
$300,000,000  and  $400,000,000  yearly.  Children  can 
save  the  larger  portion  of  this  vast  sum  and  have  a 
most  delightful  time  during  their  work  by  learning 
something  of  nature  and  applying  their  knowledge  to 
the  assistance  of  those  species  of  birds  that  will  destroy 
noxious  insects." 

It  is  doubtful  whether  the  aforesaid  children  would 
be  at  all  stimulated  in  anv  such  task  by  a  reali- 
zation of  the  immense  sum  they  would  thereby  be 
saving  the  country,  and  they  would  scarcely  be  im- 
pressed even  by  knowing  that  thev  wore  earning 
their  own  tuition  by  their  labors.  Four  hundred  and 
twenty  millions  of  dollars  is  an  impossible  sum  to 
realize  and  the  mere  work  of  reading  the  numbers 
would  l)e  fatiguing  to  a  youthful  naturalist.  Itut  if 
"those  set  in  authority  over  him"  should  ever  complain 
of  the  long  hours  he  spends  a-birding  he  can  offer  as  his 
best  excuse  the  mints  of  money  he  is  thus  virtually 
lielping  his  beloved  country  to  save. 

Bats,  snakes,  toads,  frogs,  earthworms — the  names 
of  the  quintette  are  not  attractive,  but  it  is  unlikely 


DAiiE  nature's  play-school.  69 

that  they  would  ever  be  repulsive  to  children  if  they 
were  properly  introduced,  and  it  is  certain  that  none 
of  them,  save  possibly  the  snake  in  some  parts  of  the 
country,  would  be  at  all  harmful.  The  bat,  for  in- 
stance, if  he  can  be  gently  caught  and  kept  under  glass 
for  an  hour  while  he  is  examined,  is  generally  attrac- 
tive to  children  and  is  never  afterward  feared  if  his 
work  in  the  world  is  explained. 

As  to  toads  and  frogs,  among  the  most  interesting 
and  useful  of  all  animals,  they  may  easily  be  studied 
either  in  neighboring  ponds  or  in  a  home-made  aquari- 
um, from  the  egg  to  the  bright-eyed,  beautifvilly  dap- 
pled grown-up  creature. 

It  is  estimated  that  one  toad  eats  in  a  single  season 
cutworms  that  would  else  have  destroyed  twenty  dol- 
lars worth  of  crops,  the  family  services  in  this  direc- 
tion being  so  well  known  in  France  that  they  are  sold 
by  the  dozen  in  that  enlightened  country  for  the  pro- 
tection of  gardens. 

During  last  summer's  drought  certain  members  of 
a  junior  naturalists'  club  were  so  much  impressed 
by  this  information,  as  well  as  by  the  yeoman's  service 
done  by  the  tree-toad  in  destroying  insects  and  the 
unceasing  labors  of  the  frog  at  the  same  task,  that 
they  l)ecame  alarmed  at  the  way  the  tadpoles  were  dy- 
ing off  and,  translating  their  faith  into  works,  scooped 
many  of  them  up  in  tins  and  carried  them  to  a  better 
supply  of  water. 

From  zoology  we  turn  to  the  wide  and  not  less 
interesting  field  of  botany,  and  here  the  subject  of 


70  THE  MESSAGE  OF   FROEBEL. 

collectinii!-',  naturally  comes  up.  All  the  children  of 
a  neighliorhood  may  join  in  this  work,  from  the  toddler 
to  the  l)oy  in  his  teens.  A  pleasant  task  is  to  gather, 
mount,  and  mark  a  certain  numher,  say  fifteen  each, 
of  the  leaves,  flowers,  seeds,  and  grasses  of  a  district, 
keeping  leaves  of  trees  in  one  category,  of  shrubs  and 
flowering  plants  in  another  and  so  on. 

If  any  prudent  parent  should  fear  that  quests  such 
as  these  collections  would  entail,  over  wood  and  field 
and  meadow,  woidd  l)ring  danger  in  the  form  of  poison 
to  the  child,  who  naturally  touches  and  handles  every- 
thing he  ]:)asses,  we  may  answer  that  there  are,  after  all, 
very  few  poisonous  leaves  or  berries  in  our  country  and 
that  these  are  easily  distinguishable  by  appearance  or 
odor.  As  Froebel  says,  "Each  one  of  these  plants 
utters  its  own  word  of  warning."' 

William  Hamilton  Gibson  in  his  "Sharp  Eyes" 
tells  us  that  there  is  one  page  of  botany  which  every 
dweller  in  the  country  shquld  learn,  that  which  deals 
with  the  Ehus  or  sumach.  There  are  five  species 
more  or  less  common  in  the  eastern  part  of  the  United 
States,  but  it  appears  that  only  two  of  these  are 
poisonous,  and  ^Ir.  Gibson  offers  several  verses  con- 
veying information  as  to  their  appearance, — ^Jingles 
which  can  be  learned  in  a  moment  l)y  any  child  and 
which  will  serve  as  mental  talismans  against  danger. 

Ferns,  shells,  and  sea-moss  make  equally  good 
collections,  of  course,  and  there  is  scope  for  consider- 
able ingenuity,  suited  to  the  various  ages  of  the  col- 


DAME    XATURE's    PLAY-SCHOOL.  71 

lectors,  in  gathering  the  desired  objects  and  devising 
T>^ays  of  preserving  them. 

For  Juvenile  scientists,  old  enough  for  a  moderately 
late  bedtime,  there  is  unlimited  and  fascinating  occu- 
pation in  studying  the  iieavenly  bodies.  With  a  field 
glass  and  a  chart  they  can  con  every  night  the  blue 
page  of  the  sky,  learn  the  names  and  characteristic 
colors  of  the  stars,  spy  out  the  nebulae  or  satellites, 
and  by  day  study  the  mythological  fancies  woven  about 
them. 

For  still  older  children,'  there  are  the  common 
minerals  and  rocks  to  learn, — not  a  ditficult  task  with 
all  the  modern  manuals  on  the  subject,  and  boys 
esjjecially  seem  to  take  great  delight  in  gathering 
specimens  and  in  making  cabinets  to  hold  them. 

A  child  who  is  really  interested  in  Nature's  serial 
story  and  who  is  old  enough  to  write,  will  probably 
be  delighted  if  he  is  given  a  diary  in  which  he  can 
record  the  happenings  of  every  day  of  the  season, — not 
only  rainfall  and  sunshine,  but  the  dates  when  the 
frogs  begin  to  trill,  when  the  various  leaves  unfold, 
when  the  different  birds  appear  and  disappear,  when 
each  flower  of  the  long  procession  makes  its  bow, 
when  the  white  butterflies  come  and  the  grasshoppers 
begin  to  whir  and  the  crickets  to  chirp  and  the  wasps 
to  make  friendly  calls.  Books  already  prepared  may 
be  had  for  this  purpose,  but  an  ordinary  blank  book 
with  stout  covers  is  as  good, — is  really  better  in  fact, 
for  it  gives  scope  for  individuality  in  choice  of  sub- 
ject, arrangement,  and  decoration. 


12  THE   MESSAGE  OF   FIIOEBEL. 

It  is  generally  j'oiiiul  that  all  this  nature  work  and 
study  is  made  much  more  attractive  if  a  iiumher  of 
children  take  it  up  together  and  band  themselves  into 
a  club,  which  should  be  given  an  attractive  name.  An 
older  person  is  needed  as  Secretary  or  Grand  Adviser 
of  such  an  association  to  direct  the  work,  to  record 
observations  and  mark  specimens.  Such  a  Grand  Ad- 
viser will  find  the  summer  catalogues  of  all  the  pub- 
lishers rich  with  books  on  birds,  reptiles,  insects, 
flowers,  trees,  fishes,  ferns,  stars,  and  rocks,  most  of 
them  provided  witli  plates,  colored  or  uncolored,  and 
all  pleasantly  familiar  in  style  and  adapted  to  tlie 
needs  of  a  tyro  in  science. 

Xature  stories,  too,  the  Grand  Adviser  will  find 
very  useful  at  the  meetings  of  her  society,  to  give  a 
fillip  to  general  interest,  and  poetry  will  furnish  need- 
ful inspiration,  for  literature  is  ever  the  useful  hand- 
maid of  art  and  science. 


SHOOTI^^G  FOLLY  AS  IT  FLIES. 

'"Eye  Nature's  walks,  shoot  folly  as  it  flies, 
And  catch  the  manners  living  as  they  rise; 
Laugh  where  we  must,  be  candid  where  we  can. 
But  vindicate  the  ways  of  God  to  man." 

— Alexander  Pope. 

There  are  many  kinds  of  philanthropists.  Some 
found  free  libraries  and  orphan  asylums  and  found- 
ling homes ;  some  give  to  foreign  missions  and  histor- 
ical societies ;  some  support  soup  kitchens  and  temper- 
ance restaurants;  others  endow  chairs  in  universities 
and  fit  out  i)olar  expeditions.  There  are  others  still 
who  are  retail  dealers  in  the  virtue,  as  it  were,  and 
do  their  good  deeds  in  a  small  way,  in  accordance  with 
their  capital.  Of  this  last  class  was  a  certain  Xew 
England  lover  of  nature,  who  gave  his  whole  time 
to  preserving  line  trees  from  vandalism,  driving  where- 
ever  it  was  reported  that  a  tree  was  to  be  cut  doM-n  and 
paying  the  sum  demanded,  that  it  might  stand  as  a 
perpetual  joy  to  the  neighborhood.  Another  dear 
saint,  whose  memory  is  still  green, -devoted  a  portion 
of  his  income  every  year  to  dispatching  letters  held 
for  postage;  and  an  eminent  author  whom  we  all  ad- 
mire, owns,  as  his  philanthropic  hobby,  a  manful 
attempt  to  lessen  the  sum  of  error  in  the  world,  by 
contradicting,  in  polite  notes  to  the  editor,  any  state- 
ment seen  in  the  periodicals  of  the  day  which  he  can 


7 -i  THE  MESSAGE  OF  FROEBEL. 

prove  to  be  false.  This  interesting  whim  leads  him  a 
l)nsv  and  a  vexatious  life;  but  in  one  case,  at  least,  and 
to-day,  the  present  writer  is  resolved  to  emulate  his 
example. 

There  seems  to  be  a  distinct  impression  in  some 
quarters  of  this  country  that  the  kindergarten  is-  a 
sort  of  Mahometan  Paradise,  where  children  recline  on 
flowery  beds  of  ease,  lulled  by  soft  music,  their  only 
exertion  being  to  open  tlieir  mouths  occasionally  that 
tliey  may  receive  the  mental  and  spiritual  blessings 
that  drop  from  the  gilded  clouds  above. 

A  few  representative  extracts  cut  from  some  of 
our  prominent  ])apers  in  the  last  two  months  Avill 
illustrate  this  point  of  view. 

(I.  "The  'laissez  faire'  treatment  of  children, 
which  the  kindergarten  exploits." 

&.  "Young  people  did  want  to  learn  something 
once  from  those  who  cared  for  them,  before  the  univer- 
sal 'kindergartening' "'  (Jove,  give  us  patience!) 
"brought  to  them,  without  exertion,  all  that  they  once 
inilulx'd  by  discipline  and  by  the  restraint  of  learn- 
ing submissively  and  Avith  effort." 

c.  "The  kindergarten  weakness  is  that  it  fails  to 
recognize  the  fact  that  life  is  not  all  pleasure,  and  that 
children  must  learn  to  do  things  whicli  are  disagree- 
able,— the  grim  Puritanical  idea,,  which  makes  men 
and  women  of  backbone  and  moral  fiber." 

d.  "The  experiment  of  the  kindergarten  system 
has  yet  to  demonstrate  its  values,  and  older  people 
doul)t  whether  the  discipline  of  work  for  work's  sake. 


SHOOTING    FOLLY    AS    IT    FLIES.  75 

and  obedience  out  of  respect  for  authoritj^  will  find 
an  adequate  substitute  in  the  plan  where  Jack's  ex- 
perience is  all  play  and  no  work.  May  kindergarten 
graduates  find  themselves  prepared  to  meet  the  trials 
and  disappointments  of  a  world  which  has  often  de- 
manded in  its  successful  combatants  the  bracing  prepa- 
ration of  early  hardship  and  neglect." 

Here  are  five  distinct  indictments  of  the  kinder- 
garten; — its  "laissez  faire"  treatment  of  children,  the 
indirect  statement  that  it  teaches  without  effort  on 
the  child's  part  or  discipline  on  its  own,  a  suggestion 
that  its  methods  produce  neither  backbone  nor  moral 
fiber,  an  implication  that  it  cultivates  disobedience 
and  scorn  of  authority,  and  finally  a  pious  hope  that 
its  graduates  may  be  able  to  meet  the  trials  and  dis- 
appointments of  this  trouljlous  world, — a  hope  whose 
tone  reminds  us  of  Reynard's  politeness  when  he 
brought  the  duck  to  his  kennel. 

Perhaps  you  are  not  familiar  with  the  story;  but 
it  is  rumored  that  he  said,  as  he  dropped  the  fluttering 
creature  among  his  hungry  cubs,  "I  trust  you  've  had 
a  pleasant  ride,  ma'am,  and  will  enjoy  yourself  this 
evening." 

As  there  is  no  smoke  without  some  fire,  it  is  safe 
to  suppose  that  the  writers  of  these  and  similar  criti- 
cisms may  have  seen  certain  specimens  of  kindergarten 
training  which  merited,  in  part  at  least,  the  diatribes 
directed  against  them;  but  granting  this  point,  what 
logic  or  justice  is  there  in  condemning  an  entire  edu- 
cational svstem  because  of  some  local  fault  of  inter- 


V()  THE   ^[ESSAGE  OF   FROEBEL. 

pretation?  Do  we  flout  the  modern  schools  of  medi- 
cine because  unskilled  practitioners  kill  their  patients 
now  and  then?  Do  we  condemn  electric  lighting  he- 
cause  a  stray  wire  may  occasionally  be  deadly?  Do  we 
jeer  at  Christianity  because  its  votaries  sometimes 
fall  from  grace? 

This  matter  of  the  kindergarten  is  too  vital  a  one, 
its  issues  too  far-reaching,  to  be  court-martialed 
and  sentenced  in  this  suiiiniary  fashion.  If  indeed, 
when  interpreted  according  to  the  precepts  of  its 
founder,  it  can  be  proven  in  the  majority  of  cases  to 
cultivate  idleness,  love  of  luxury,  weakness,  lack  of 
UKU-al  filjer  and  energy,  disobedience,  misrule,  and 
anarchy,  then  the  sooner  it  is  swept  from  the  face  of 
the  earth  the  better  for  the  nations  thereof.  If,  on  the 
contrary,  these  charges  are  unfounded,  Avhen  made 
against  the  system  considered  as  a  whole,  then  a  great 
wrong  is  being  done  to  a  profound  educational  phi- 
losophy devoutly  believed  in  by  large  and  increasing 
numbers  of  people. 

The  charge  that  it  fosters  idleness  might  easily 
be  refuted,  it  would  seem,  for  the  most  ignorant  on- 
looker could  not  but  agree  that  there  is  no  busier 
creature  than  a  kindergarten  child.  His  hands  are 
literally  never  still ;  for  when  he  is  not  occupied  at 
his  table,  he  is  joyfi;lly  active  in  song  and  play.  Xor 
is  this  occupation  at  the  tal)le  anything  which  is 
forced  upon  him,  Avhieh  he  does  with  little  grace, 
drops  as  soon  as  possible,  and  neglects  if  the  eye  of 
authority  be  not  upon  him.     It  is  done  eagerly  and 


SHOOTING    FOLLY    AS    IT    FLIES.  77 

"with  delight,  because  it  is  worth  doing  and  he  loves 
Lt.  If  this  is  not  "work  for  work's  sake," — a  motive 
which  our  last  critic  affects  to  consider  as  out  of  date, 
where  may  we  find  a  clearer  illustration  of  the  phrase  ? 
for  there  is  no  reward  connected  with  the  industry, 
save  that  of  success,  and  the  finished  product  is  com- 
monly bestowed  upon  others.  So  far  is  the  kinder- 
garten child  from  idleness,  that  another  class  of  critics 
ci'ies  out  that  he  is  being  forced  and  overworked  and 
that  he  is  frequently  made  nervous  by  excess  of  in- 
dustry. 

The  charge  that  Froebel's  system  of  education 
cultivates  luxurious  habits  scarcely  needs  a  moment's 
consideration.  If  keeping  the  pupil  in  a  bright  clean 
room,  gay  with  plants  and  flowers,  and  hung  with 
•  appropriate  pictures,  is  breeding  in  him  a  love  of 
luxury,  then  the  Creator's  idea  of  the  earth  as  a 
training  school  for  man  must  l)e  a  wholly  mistaken 
one;  and  if  the  l)aby  may  not  employ  himself  with 
brilliant  colors  and  graceful  forms,  though  fashioned 
from  the  j^lainest  and  most  universal  materials,  then 
the  promptings  of  Xature  for  playing  with  Ijrightness 
must  be  altogether  disregarded  and  set  at  naught. 

The  statement  that  the  kindergarten  produces 
weakness  and  lack  of  energy  in  tlie  pupil  evidently 
springs  from  the  belief  tbat  every  experience  comes 
to  him  ready  made  in  that  enchanted  region;  that  he 
is  a  little  pitcher  whicli  passively  allows  itself  to  be 
filled,  in  the  Gradgrind  fashion,  with  imperial  gallons 
of  facts. 


78  THE   MESSAGE  OF   EKOEBEL. 

Tf  there  is  any  one  idea  in  the  whole  range  of 
educational  thought,  upon  which  Froebel  insisted  and 
re-insisted,  upon  which  he  lectured  and  theorized,  and 
which  he  conceived  that  he  had  finally  reduced  to  prac- 
tice, it  was  that  of  self-activity  on  the  part  of  the 
learner ;  and  it  would  seem  extremely  diiUcult  so 
to  conduct  a  kindergarten  as  to  hurl  from  its  place 
one  of  the  chief  stones  of  its  foundation.  It  is  not 
to  he  supposed,  because  the  work  is  agreeable  to  the 
child,  that  it  is  therefore  so  easy  as  to  require  no 
effort  on  his  part.  It  is  for  the  joy  that  is  set  before 
him  that  he  endures  the  difficulties,  and  because  he 
has  once  tasted  the  pleasures  of  success  that  he  is 
willing  to  labor. 

Xo  one  who  is  familiar  with  the  everyday  handi- 
work of  kindergarten  children  and  knows  how  neat 
and  well-wrought  and  artistic  it  commonly  is, — no 
one  who  knows  this  and  at  the  same  time  knows  the 
powers  and  capabilities  of  children  from  three  to  six 
years  old,  could  for  a  moment  doubt,  it  might  be 
supposed,  that  it  was  executed  by  dint  of  the  greatest 
industry,  energy,  ardor,  patience  and  perseverance. 

That  children  enjoy  putting  forth  such  eflforts 
is  quite  true;  but  one  would  imagine  that  this  fact 
might  place  the  matter  in  a  still  more  favorable  light. 
No  one  doubts  the  statement  of  one  of  our  critics  that 
the  world  often  demands  of  its  successful  combatants 
the  bracing  preparation  of  early  hardship  and  neglect ; 
but  it  can  hardly  be  seriously  supposed  that  an  edu- 


SHOOTING    FOLLY    AS    IT    FLIES.  79 

cational  system  for  babies  could  successfully  be  built 
u})ou  such  a  foundation. 

It  is  true  enough  that  many  of  the  world's  heroes 
struggled  up  through  bitter  waters  of  trial  to  the 
sunlight  above,  but  who  is  to  say  that  such  experiences 
are  fitted  for  the  non-hero,  for  the  ordinary  mortal 
who  is  not  called  upon  to  do  great  deeds  or  think 
great  thoughts  but  simply  to  perform  his  own  share 
of  the  world's  work  and  to  help  a  fainting  brother 
here  and  there? 

Another  skeptic,  evidently  a  blood-relation  of  the 
writer  whose  criticisms  we  are  now  considering,  lately 
complained  in  a  Boston  paper,  that  schooling  nowadays 
from  kindergarten  to  university  is  far  too  pleasurable 
a  process,  opined  that  the  school  should  be  a  sort  of 
drill-ground  for  the  stern  realities  of  life  and  pre- 
dicted that  having  had  no  previous  experience  in 
hardships  the  modern  child  would  be  conquered  by 
the  first  attack  of  life's  natural  woes. 

This  is  a  specious  sort  of  reasoning, — one  that 
when  first  considered  seems  to  have  some  elements  of 
good  sense  about  it  and  yet,  after  all,  looked  at  more 
closely,  they  melt  away  quickly  enough.  As  a  wise 
man  said  the  other  day  in  discussing  the  value  of  a 
happy,  sheltered  childhood ;  "Does  n't  everybody  know 
from  observation  that  nine  times  out  of  ten  the 
man  who  has  been  gently  bred,  with  every  puff  of  an 
ill  wind  kept  from  him  l)y  loving  hands,  meets  a  great 
disaster  when  it  comes  with  a  grace  or  a  defiance,  as 
the  ease  may  be,  seldom  seen  in  men  who  from  baby- 


80  THPJ   :»rESSAGE  OF   FROEBEL. 

hood  up  have  known  uhnost  nothing  but  hard  knocks  ? 
Somehow  the  'training  process'  has  taken  the  stamina 
ont  of  such  social  victims — has  depleted  their  courage 
so  that  the  great  ill,  when  it  comes,  overwhelms  them 
comjiletely,  at  least  for  a  time." 

And  now  the  question  as  to  lack  of  moral  fiber 
in  the  kindergarten  graduate.  What  does  ,this  mean, 
exactly  ?  Probalily  that  the  child  is  selfish,  capricious, 
unscrupulous,  tyrannical,  and  perhaps  untruthful. 
Certainly  such  children  have  been  seen  in  many  kin- 
dergartens; but  similar  monsters  have  ere  now  issued 
from  decent,  well-ordered  homes,  and  nobody  has 
therefore  cried  out  upon  the  sacred  institution  of 
the  family ! 

How  can  a  system  of  training  whieli  Avas  framed 
to  teach  helpfulness,  the  value  of  co-operation,  the 
beauty  of  brotherly  love  and  the  joy  of  working  for 
others,  degenerate,  even  under  unfavorable  conditions, 
into  a  nursery  for  selfishness  ? 

How  can  a  system  whose  tools  of  education  are 
evolved  systematically  one  from  the  other,  and  inter- 
connected :  whose  plays,  of  whatever  kind,  are  'logical 
developments  of  thought;  whose  products  require  sus- 
tained, purposeful  and  continuous  effort; — how  can 
such  a  system,  when  administered  by  even  a  moderate 
intelligence,  develop  capriciousness  ? 

How  can  a  training  which  leads  a  child  uniformly 
to  consider  the  weaklings  and  younglings  of  the  flock, 
to  observe  that  leadership  in  any  line  is  synonymous 
with  worthiness,  to  note  that  "all  are  needed  by  each 


SHOOTING    FOLLY    AS    IT    FLIES.  81 

one"  and  that  his  own  powers,  no  matter  how  great, 
are  lost  without  co-operation; — how  can  this  training 
develop  a  tyrant? 

And  how  can  a  system  which  neither  terrorizes, 
nor  punishes  revengefully ;  which  endeavors  to  teach 
fair-dealing  and  loving  kindness;  which  daily  gives 
concrete  experience  with  the  connection  of  cause  and 
effect,  with  error  and  its  natural  result,  with  wrong- 
doing and  retribution;  wliich  aims  to  cultivate  clear 
seeing,  clear  thinking  and  clear  speaking  within  its 
small  range  of  subjects ; — how  can  it  justly  be  charged 
vrith  fostering  unscrupiilousness  and  falsehood? 

As  to  the  "laissez  fa  ire"  treatment  of  children,  we 
might  answer  that  in  one  sense,  the  phrase  very  well 
illustrates  kindergarten  procedure.  We  do  believe, 
if  you  choose  to  put  the  matter  in  that  way,  in  letting 
the  children  alone  to  a  certain  extent,  believing  that 
like  trees,  if  they  are  set  in  the  right  soil,  in  the  right 
climate,  properly  cultivated  and  under  the  right  at- 
mospheric conditions,  they  may  be  trusted  to  do  their 
own  growing. 

Our  critic,  however,  has  nothing  of  this  in  mind; 
his  meaning  is  closely  allied  to  the  last  indictment, 
that  of  the  child-garden  as  a  school  of  disobedience, 
misrule,  and  anarchy.  This  complaint  is  more  often 
seen  than  any  of  the  others,  and  in  any  kindergarten 
center,  one  or  two  institutions  couhl  perliaps  be  Fouiul 
which  would  come  dangerously  near  furnishing  thi' 
prosecuting  attorney  in  the  case  with  evidence  lead  in  li' 
toward  conviction. 


82  THE  MESSAGE   OF   FKOEBEL. 

The  fact  is  that  Froebers  ideal  in  discipline  is  a 
diflficult  one  to  reach;  and  since  kindergartners  are 
only  ordinary  women,  it  is  the  less  wonder  that  they 
sometimes  fail  to  attain  unto  it.  It  must  l)e  a  dis- 
cipline which  has  nothing  of  formalism  or  rigidity 
abont  it ;  it  must  exist  by  consent  of  the  governed ; 
it  must  be  free  and  elastic,  and  yet  it  must  implant 
a  reverence  for  law,  order,  and  authority  in  each  one 
of  the  embryo  citizens  for  whom  it  is  maintained. 
]S[o  one  doubts  that  the  practical  workings  of  a  des- 
potism are  simpler  than  those  of  a  republic,  and  it 
was  a  republic  that  Froebel  desired  to  make  of  his 
training  school   for  babies. 

To  supi)ose,  however,  that  a  good,  or  even  a  fairly 
good,  kindergarten  tolerates  disobedience,  or  allows 
lawlessness  or  anarchy  witliin  its  bounds,  is  the  great- 
est of  mistakes.  There  is  no  better  discipline  when 
the  proper  person  is  at  the  head  of  affairs,  and  none 
more  ideal,  because  it  aims  to  make  each  individual 
self-governing.  Order  is  an  essential  part  of  every 
exercise  of  the  day;  a  reverence  for  law  is  constantly 
instilled  in  ever}^  study  whose  l;)eginnings  the  child 
takes  up ;  and  under  these  conditions  and  with  the 
right  hand  at  the  helm,  the  ship  glides  along  on  an 
even  keel,  her  sails  fdled  with  the  winds  of  peace 
and  harmony. 

It  must  always  be  easier  to  handle  a  simple  tool 
than  a  fine  and  delicate  instrument ;  anybody  can 
whittle,  but  not  everybody  can  manage  a  turning 
lathe.     If  the  kindergarten  fails  here  and  there,  as  it 


SHOOTIXG    FOLLY    AS    IT    FLIES.  83 

does  of  necessity  fail,  as  everything  must  sometimes 
fail  whose  management  is  intrusted  to  human  intelli- 
gence, we  need  not  use  tliese  failures  to  discredit  the 
principles  upon  which  the  system  is  hased.  We  may 
disbar  the  unworthy  practitioner,  but  we  do  not  there- 
fore cry  out  upon  the  law. 

An  adopted  citizen  of  this  country  (the  Hon.  Carl 
Schurz),  one  who  is  more  truh'  an  American  than 
many  who  were  born  on  the  soil,  lately  said  a  few 
things  in  discussing  the  failures  of  a  democratic  gov- 
ernment which  are  not  only  valuable  in  themselves, 
but  of  a]:)plication  here.  ''Indeed,"  he  said,  "our 
government  has  had  its  failures  and  will  have  more. 
Honest  and  earnest  criticism  of  those  failures — even, 
if  need  be,  the  most  searching  and  merciless^ — is  a  good 
citizen's  duty.  So  is  the  pointing  out  of  threatening 
dangers.  But  criticism  and  the  pointing  out  of  danger 
must  never  have  the  object  of  discouraging  wise  and 
vigorous  effort  for  improvement.  If  they  do,  they  de- 
generate into  that  dreary  pessimism  which,  whenever 
something  goes  wrong,  cries  out  that  everything  is  lost. 
If  the  pessimist  who  employs  his  criticism  to  prove 
democratic  government  a  failure  would  apply  the  same 
spirit  and  method  of  criticism  to  monarchical  or  aristo- 
cratic governments,  he  would  easily  prove  them  fail- 
ures, too — and,  in  some  respects,  failures  of  a  worse 
kind.  In  fact,  he  would  prove  any  arid  every  form  of 
government  a  failure,  ending  in  the  demonstration  of 
the  failure  of  the  universe." 


THE    PERSONALITY    OF    THE    KINDEEGAE- 
TEN   TRAINIXG    TEACHER. 

"How  can  I  hear  what  you  say  when  what  you  are  is 
thundering  in  my  ears?" 

— A'.  IF.  Emerson. 

Altiiofgti  the  work  of  the  Fates  once  done  is 
clone  forever,  although  they  ha\e  never  been  persuaded 
to  take  up  again  a  task  once  fallen  from  their  hands, 
yet  no  one  supposes,  I  fancy,  that  their  skill  is  un- 
erring, nor  that  there  are  not  some  days  when  they 
would  not  be  the  better  for  a  competent  overseer. 

It  is  obvious  that  Atropos,  as  she  severs  the  thread 
of  human  life,  sometimes  snips  it  too  quickly,  and 
sometimes  lets  it  run  through  her  hands  too  long.  If 
this  were  not  so,  why  should  some  persons  keep  on 
living  whose  absence  from  the  earth  would  greatly 
enhance  its  attractions,  and  some  be  taken  away  whose 
permanent  presence  seems  the  one  thing  desirable? 
N"or  are  the  other  weird  sisters  more  trustworthy. 
Clotho  is  not  a  faultless  workwoman^  for  it  appears 
that  she  does  not  always  spin  her  thread  of  the 
same  tensile  strength.  It  may  be  the  fault  of  Lachesis, 
who,  being  a  gifted  person,  is  possibly  subject  to 
moods,  and  may  not  twirl  the  spindle  at  the  same  rate 
on  every  day  of  the  week.  It  is  ditlicult  to  fix  the 
responsil)ilitv  for  the  deviations,  l)ut  obviously  tlie 
thread  turned  out  is  bv  no  means  uniform,  some  of  it 


8G  THE  MESSAGE  OF  FROEBEL. 

being  thick  enough  for  a  hawser,  and  some  fine  enough 
to  hem  a  cambric  handkerchief. 

It  is  not  so  surprising,  then,  that  we  sometimes 
fail  to  get  the  right  quality  for  the  required  purpose, 
since  we  commonly  do  not  trouble  to  select  from  a 
large  assortment,  but  rather  take  the  first  s^Decimen 
that  comes  to  hand.  This  is  so  true  and  so  much  a 
matter  of  everyday  experience  that  the  moral  needs  no 
pointing,  the  tale  no  adorning.  George  Eliot  once 
said  that  when  we  consider  the  tragic  errors  made  in 
selecting  persons  to  fill  the  only  relationships  open 
to  choice,  we  are  overcome  with  gratitude  to  a  wise 
Providence  who  so  riiled  it  that  all  the  renuiining  ties 
should  be  formed  before  our  birth.  Would  that  this 
arrangement  might  have  been  a  little  further  extended, 
we  sometimes  think,  to  cover  responsible  jiositions  in 
biisiness  and  professional  life;  for  then,  had  we  seen 
the  square  peg  painfully  trying  to  squeeze  himself 
into  the  round  hole  and  the  round  peg  ardently  striv- 
ing to  expand  himself  to  fit  the  corners  of  the  square 
one,  we  should  have  resigned  ourselves  to  the  inevi- 
table, bowed  our  heads  and  said  "Kismet !"' 

All  this  is  by  way  of  preamble;  and  now,  if  you 
are  one  of  those  persons  whose  minds  are  given  to 
leaps,  you  have  but  to  exercise  your  faculty  and,  con- 
sidering duly  the  title  of  the  paper,  you  need  read  no 
further,  for  the  subject  is  spread  out  before  you.  Yet 
for  those  who  like  better  to  be  personally  conducted  on 
a  tour  than  to  make  out  the  route  for  themselves,  there 


THE    KIXDEBGAKTEX    TKAIXIXG    TEACHER.  87 

is  something  still  to  say  and  a  special  application  to 
make  of  the  foregoing  generalities. 

As  the  kindergarten  grows  in  public  favor  and 
repute,  as  it  is  lifted  into  greater  prominence,  we  are 
enabled  to  see  more  clearly  the  difficulties  which  attend 
the  proper  development  of  its  principles  and  the  draw- 
backs which  hang  upon  it  and  impede  its  progress. 
There  are  man}'  of  these, — as  there  must  of  necessity 
be  whenever  a  great  idea  is  introduced  to  the  world; 
but  one  of  the  foremost  has  always  been  the  lack  of 
ideal  persons  to  interpret  the  doctrine.  This  is  doubt- 
less no  more  true  of  the  kindergarten  than  of  Chris- 
tianity, for  instance;  but  has  it  been  equally  appre- 
ciated? Those  of  us  who  have  been  studying  Froebel 
so  long  that  his  views  have  become  second  nature 
feel  that  the  pre-eminent  value  of  the  kindergarten, 
its  distinguishing  mark  of  perfection,  lies  in  the  out- 
look it  gives  upon  the  world,  the  clear,  rational,  and 
no  less  spiritual  attitude  of  mind  which  it  engenders. 
This  is  true  of  child,  and  true  of  adult ;  but  true  of 
neither,  perhaps,  if  the  kindergarten  influence  be  not 
radiated  from  the  right  quarter.  Much  has  been  said 
of  the  personality  of  the  ideal  kindergartner,  but  have 
we  sufficiently  considered  that  of  the  ideal  training 
teacher?  Yet  why  is  one  matter  less  important  than 
the  other?  Or  if  there  be  a  difference,  why  should 
not  the  personalit}'  of  a  teacher  of  teachers  be  a  still 
more  vital  question,  because  through  her  students  she 
must  eventually  act  not  only  upon  the  children  of  the 
present  but  upon  those  of  the  future. 


88  THE  MESSAGE  OF   FROEBEL. 

Lack  of  appreciation  of  the  spiritual  side  of  the 
kindergarten  among  those  empowered  to  select  train- 
ing teachers  often  results  in  thinking  only  of  the 
mental  attainments  of  the  person  under  consideration. 
These  may  all  be  there ;  she  may  possess  every  diploma, 
every  certificate  of  proficiency  and  experience  offered  in 
the  kindergarten  field;  and  yet  the  highest  powers  of 
all  may  be  lacking, — those  that  take  their  root  in  per- 
sonality, deep  down  below  the  conscious  self.  Dr. 
Stanley  Hall  wisely  says  on  this  point:  "We  have 
sought  the  real  ego  in  the  intellect.  It  is  not  there, 
nor  yet  in  the  will,  which  is  a  far  better  expression 
of  it  than  thought.  Its  nucleus  is  below  the  threshold 
of  conscioiisness.  The  mistake  of  ego-theorists  is  akin 
to  that  of  those  who  thought  icebergs  were  best  studied 
from  above  the  surface,  and  were  moved  by  winds; 
when,  in  fact,  about  nine  tenths  of  their  mass  is  sub- 
merged, and  they  follow  the  deeper  and  more  constant 
oceanic  currents,  often  in  the  teeth  of  gales,  vitiating 
all  tlie  old  aerodynamic  equations." 

It  is  from  this  deeper  self,  from  this  real  per- 
sonality, that  unconscious  influence,  which  is  the  only 
real  influence,  is  radiated ;  and  it  is  this  that  we 
must  regard,  if  what  is  so  ethereal  and  indefinable  may 
be  apprehended,  when  wo  think  of  the  ideal  training 
teacher.  iS^ot  that  her  mental  equipment  is  to  be 
lield  of  less  account,  but  that  what  lies  below  and 
around  it  is  to  be  considered  as  something  more  price- 
less still. 

It  has  fallen  to  woman  to  be  the  great  civilizer  and 


THE    KINDERGARTEN    TRAINING    TEACHER.  89 

educator  of  the  race  m  all  times,  but  lier  work  has 
been  accomplished  by  force  of  her  spirituality,  and  it 
is  there  that  her  strongest  influence  must  always  lie, 
however  learned,  philosophical,  and  scientific  future 
training  may  make  her. 

Goethe's  Iphigenia,  says  Dr.  Felix  Adler,  works  a 
twofold  miracle  in  the  play.  "She  humanizes  a  bar- 
barian and  she  absolves  a  sinner;  and  how  does  she 
accomj^lish  these  results?  Not  by  what  she  does,  but 
by  what  she  is ; — by  her  radiant  personality,  by  the 
crystalline  truthfulness  of  her  nature,  by  the  new 
faith  in  the  good  which  she  inspires  in  all  who  come 
in  contact  with  her."' 

Such  a  radiant  personality,  such  a  crystalline  truth- 
fulness of  nature,  is  needed  by  the  kindergarten  train- 
ing teacher,  whose  character  must  inevitabl}'  make  deep 
impression  upon  the  minds  of  her  students;  and  the 
more  surely  so,  as  they  are  all  engaged  in  the  same 
work,  all  thrilling  with  the  same  thoughts,  all  busy 
upon  the  same  experiments.  "It  is  a  characteristic  of 
the  estate  of  youth,"  says  Dr.  Hall  again,  "that  it  is 
molded  by  contact  with  great  characters;  and,  if  it 
does  not  find  needed  heroes  and  leaders,  makes  them 
often  of  the  poorest  material,  or  finds  tinsel  idols  in 
the  cheapest  fiction." 

Let  us  remember  that  revelation  is,  and  always 
must  be,  personal  in  the  first  instance;  and  that  the 
depth,  the  strength,  the  height,  the  beauty,  and  the 
tenderness  of  kindergarten  principles  are  unfolded 
to    the    pupil    in    the    beginning    only    through    the 


00  THE  MESSAGE  OF   FROEBEL. 

instrumentality  of  the  training  teacher.  We  cannot 
doubt  that  in  many  cases  the  attitude  of  mind  in  which 
the  student  shall  ever  after  regard  her  vocation,  is  abso- 
lutely fixed  by  her  first  month's  work  in  the  training- 
class.  The  student  may  not  know  it ;  her  leader  cannot 
know  it, — for  the  influence  which  she  is  exerting 
comes  from  that  part  of  herself  which  the  plummet 
of  her  consciousness  has  never  reached.  Down,  deep 
down,  below  the  surface  waters  of  what  she  has 
learned  and  read  and  been  told  and  thought  she 
believed,  and  thinks  she  is  teaching,  lies  what  she  is; 
and  it  is  this  which  is  of  supreme  and  eternal  im- 
portance. 

"We  buy  ashes  for  bread; 
We  buy  diluted  wine; 
Give  me  of  the  true. 
Whose  ample  leaves  and  tendrils,  curled 
Among  the  silver  hills  of  heaven. 
Draw  everlastinsf  dew." 


OUR   NUESEEY   TALES— TO-DAY   AXD   YES- 
TEEDAY. 

"I  would  not  for  any  quantity  of  gold  part  with  the 
wonderful  tales  which  I  have  retained  from  my  earliest  in- 
fancy, or  have  met  witli  in  uiy  progress  through  life." 

— Martin  Luther. 

All  the  earth  is  full  of  tales  to  him  who  listens, 
and  there  is  no  there  nor  here,  no  then  nor  now  for 
the  fair}^  and  the  folk  story.  They  were  no  more  thor- 
oughly at  home,  no  more  suited  to  their  environment, 
when  they  flowed  from  the  lips  of  our  Aryan  ancestors 
in  some  far-off  region  in  the  misty  long  ago  than  they 
are  to-day  as  they  appear  ill  new  type  on  the  pages  of 
a  new  magazine  in  new  America. 

In  one  sense  they  are  as  old  as  time  itself,  as  old 
as  that  "childish  wonder  which  is  the  first  step  in 
human  wisdom" ;  in  another,  we  may  be  tempted  to 
call  them  modern,  for  the  earliest  collections  in  any 
of  the  tongues  of  the  Occident  were  made  one  hun- 
dred years  after  jMontaigne,  whom  Lowell  calls  our 
first  modern  writer,  and  a  century  and  a  half  later 
than  the  latest  date  commonly  assigned  as  the  begin- 
ning of  modern  history.  In  the  true  meaning  of 
the  word,  however,  the  fairy  tale  can  no  more  be  con- 
sidered modern  than  the  coming  of  the  dawn  or  the 
falling  of  the  dusk,  though  renewed  each  day,  may 
be  considered  modern  instances.     Like  these  phenom- 


92  THE  :message  of  fkoebel. 

ona  of  nature,  fairy  tak'^  have  been  since  time  began, 
for  the  first  naked  savage  no  sooner  rose  above  the 
stage  of  mere  brute  existence;,  no  sooner  looked  with 
wonder  on  the  world  about  him,  than  he  endowed  with 
life  the  objects  of  that  world,  supposing,  as  he  could 
not  but  suppose,  that  their  workings  were  due  to  an 
inward  volition  of  which  he  was  conscious  in  himself. 
He  saw  in  tlie  great  white  clouds,  cows  with  swelling 
udders,  driven  to  the  milking  by  the  wind-god;  in 
the  sun  a  yellow-haired  divinity,  wedding  at  even-tide 
the  violet  light  whic-h  he  had  forsaken  in  the  morn- 
ing ;  in  the  moon  a  horned  huntress  coursiny;  throuijh 
the  blue  sea  of  air,  and  in  the  lightning  a  fiery  serpent 
whose  bite  was  fatal  and  whose  hissing  as  he  fell 
savagely  upon  the  earth  was  the  rolling  of  the  thunder. 
Robert  Browning,  in  contemplating  the  childhood 
of  the  world,  says  in  "Paracelsus," 

" Man,    once    descried,    imprints    forever 

His   presence   on   all    lifeless    things;    the   winds 

Are   henceforth    voices,    wailing   or   a    shout, 

A  querulous  mutter  or  a  quick  gay  laugh, 

Never  a  senseless  gust  now  man  is  born. 

The  herded   pines   commiuie   and   have   deep    thoughts  *  * 

The   peerless   cup   alloat 
Of  the  lake-lily  is  an  urn,   some  Nymph 
Swims   bearing  high   above  her   head."' 

These  myths,  as  they  first  became  current,  were 
doubtless  felt  to  be  neither  poetic  nor  fanciful,  but 
were  merely  considered  to  1)e  satisfactory  explana- 
tions of  familiar  phenomena,  quite  as  acceptable  as  our 


OUR    XTRSERY    TALES.  93 

modern  scientific  theories  on  the  eclipse  of  tlie  sun,  or 
the  rising-  and  i'alling  of  the  tides. 

One  well-devised  and  wonder-satisfving-  mytli 
speedily  became  the  parent  of  countless  myth-chil- 
dren and  these  again,  as  time  flew  on,  produced  in  their 
kind  until  the  world  is  peopled  with  their  progeny, 
and  history,  science,  art,  literature,  and  common  speech 
all  palpitate  with  their  presence. 

We  need  not  here  attempt  to  recite  the  arguments 
on  that  great  mooted  question,  whether  the  body  of 
these  ancient  myths,  so  startlingly  alike  among  all 
primitive  peoples,  originated  in  the  same  ancestral 
tongue,  or  whether  similarity  of  conditions  in  inan  and 
nature  may  account  for  the  production  of  some  of 
them  at  least,  in  widely  distant  times  and  countries. 

We  have  only  here  to  consider  their  relation  to 
the  nursery  tales,  only  here  to  answer  the  poet's  ques- 
tion 

" Whence    these    stories, 

Whence  these  legends  and  traditions. 

With  the  odors  of  tlie  forest, 

With  the  dew  Eind  damp  of  meadows?"' 

It  can  be  proven,  undouljtcdly,  that  the  classic 
fairy  story,  the  perfect  example  of  its  kind,  one  which. 
like  that  hund^le  plant  we  call  the  "live  foi-e\er,"" 
cannot  be  crushed,  or  trampled,  or  weeded,  or  discour- 
aged out  of  existence — one  whicli  persistently  rcajv 
pears  in  all  times,  all  countries,  all  arts,  and  all  liter- 
atures— that  such  a  tale  is  invariably  leased  upon  a 
universal  mvth  and  that  it  is  as  niucli  a  i)arl  of  our 


94  THE  MESSAGE  OF   FROEBEL. 

inherited  equipment  as  a  belief  in  a  Supreme  Power. 
These  stories  descend  to  us  from  a  time  when  there 
was  "no  supernatural  because  it  had  not  yet  been 
discovered  that  there  was  such  a  thing  as  nature,"  and 
from  (lays  when  primitive  man  felt  that  close  com- 
munity existed  between  himself  and  the  brute.  The 
doctrine  of  metempsychosis,  which  is  found  in  some 
shape  or  other  all  over  the  world,  implies,  as  John 
Fiske  says,  a  fundamental  identity  betAveen  the  two, 
and  who  can  positively  deny  that  in  ages  long  past 
there  might  not  have  been  a  period  when  there  was 
such  a  rapprochement,  such  a  similarity  of  develop- 
ment between  man  and  his  brothers  "in  air  and  water 
and  the  silent  wood,"  that  he  might  not  have  understood 
their  language  as  we,  by  sympathy  and  daily  inter- 
course, grow  to  understand  the  almost  inarticulate 
babblings  of  tlie  infant  amongst  us? 

Xc  less  remarkable  than  the  age  of  these  stories  is 
their  universal  spread.  Whatever  their  date  or  origin, 
they  all  alike  have  wings,  and  as  the  bird  knows  his 
nest,  they  know  their  resting  place  in  the  heart  of  all 
peoples.  It  gives  one  a  new  sense  of  the  brotherhood 
of  man,  of  the  essential  oneness  of  humanity,  to  find 
that  the  very  same  tale  which  charms  its  hearers  in 
the  Arabian  desert  and  the  coffee  houses  of  Bagdad,  is 
listened  to  with  delight  by  the  Zuiii  cliff  dwellers,  by 
the  fur-clad  Esquimaux,  and  l)y  the  American-bred 
negroes  on  our  Southern  plantations. 

N"ot  only  so,  Imt  the  philologists  prove  that  the 
primitive  Aryan,  "as  he  took  his  evening  meal  of  yava 


OUR    XURSEItY    TALES.  95 

and  siiDped  his  fermented  mead,"  undoubtedly  listened 
to  tales  of  "Cinderella,"  "•Boots,"  or  the  "Master 
Thief,"  that  were  absolutely  identical  in  all  their  main 
features*  v/ith  those  your  little  daughter  takes  down  to- 
day in  their  gay  covers  from  her  nursery  shelves. 

The  Orient  seems  in  all  times  to  have  been  one 
of  the  richest  storehouses  of  myths,  allegories,  para- 
bles, apologues,  folk  stories,  and  tales  of  terror  and 
wonder.  j\Iuch  of  this  profusion  is  due,  no  doubt, 
to  the  mental  characteristics  of  Oriental  races,  and 
much  to  the  tropical  climate,-  which  renders  possible 
and  desirable  long  hours  of  serene  and  contemplative 
leisure  in  which  the  art  of  the  story-teller  can  be  per- 
fected. 

The  Crusaders  unwittingly  did  literature  a  great 
service  in  bringing  home  from  the  Orient  many  of 
these  magical  tales  which  were  spread  abroad  by 
preaching  friars, — for  illustrated  sermons  seem  to  have 
heeii  as  much  the  fashion  then,  as  they  are  among 
revivalists  to-day;  were  repeated  by  travelers  and 
mendicants  to  secure  food  and  a  night's  lodging,  and 
were  recounted,  with  others  of  their  kind — sagas, 
household  tales,  legends,  and  fables — by  minstrel,  glee- 
man,  jester,  jongleur,  and  trouvere. 

In  days  when  there  was  no  literature  save  what 
could  be  communicated  orally,  when  every  man  was 
his  own  novelist,  so  to  speak,  as  well  as  his  own  maga- 
zine and  newspaper,  the  profession  of  story-teller 
must  have  been  one  of  great  delight  and  profit.     The 

•John  Fiske :  "  Myths  and  Mvth  Makers." 


9(5  THE  :\rE.SSAGE  OF   FROEBEL. 

mcmorv,  sole  and  sufficient  resource  for  those  who 
have  never  weakened  it  by  reference  to  printed  word, 
was  for  many  centuries  the  only  library  of  these 
artists,  for  the  literary  faculty  seems  to  have  been 
used  only  in  embellishing  the  form  of  the  tales,  trans- 
posing them  from  prose  to  poetry  and  vice  versa, 
and  in  adding  jokes,  local  hits,  or  corroborative  de- 
tail. 

In  the  first  years  of  the  twelfth  century  those  few 
English  story-tellers  who  were  also  Latin  scholars, 
if  there  were  any  such  among  the  humbler  folk,  might 
reinforce  their  stock  of  magical  and  supernatural  lore 
from  tlie  Disciplina  Cleriealis,  \\-liieh  was  put  together 
about  that  time  by  Peter  Alfonsus,  a  Spanish  Jew. 
It  was  a  wonderful  book,  partly  'derived  from  the 
Talmud,  partly  from  Arabian  fables,  and  partly  from 
Sanscrit  tales,  which  had  been  translated  into  Persian, 
thence  into  Arabic,  and  thence  again  into  Greek. 

Komance  had  taken  root  at  the  court  of  Henry  I. 
at  the  very  beginning  of  this  century,  where,  under 
Queen  Maud's  patronage,  that  "daring  fabulist,'' 
Geoffrey  of  jMonmouth,  transcribed,  rewrote,  and  adapt- 
ed old  AVelsh  myths,  dreams,  and  traditions,  partly 
from  old  Latin  manuscripts  and  partly  from  Breton 
legends,  calling  the  glittering  whole  a  History  of  the 
Britons. 

More  than  a  century  after  this  the  Gesta  Romano- 
rum  appeared  in  England,  a  curious  jumble  of  classi- 
cal, Oriental,  and  Gothic  fictions,  but  a  wonderful  store- 
house for  romancers.     In  its  pages  Boccaccio  found 


OUR    NURSERY    TALES.  97 

his  Two  Friends,  Gower  and  Chaucer  the  History  of 
Constance,  Shakespeare  his  Merchant  of  Venice,  and 
in  still  more  modern  days  Schiller  his  Fridolin,  Par- 
nell  his  Hermit,  and  Walpole  his  Mysterious  Mother. 

The  great  body  of  story-tellers,  however,  in  what- 
ever land  they  lived,  had  for  hundreds  of  years  no 
thought  of  reference  to  written  literature  for  their 
material,  for  the  mass  of  myth-descended  tales  and 
romances  was  at  the  command  of  all  who  having  ears 
could  hear  and  having  tongues  could  speak. 

When  we  begin  to  consider  these  stories  as  the 
art  of  printing  has  fixed  them  in  permanent  form,  wc 
are  amazed  at  the  fidelity  with  which  their  inner 
meaning  and  spiritual  content  have  been  preserved 
from  age  to  age.  Even  the  clothing  of  the  tale  has 
frequently  been  retained,  the  story-teller  often  using 
certain  old-time  words  here  and  there,  which  had  no 
longer  any  meaning  either  to  him  or  to  his  hearers,  but 
were  repeated  mechanically  as  somehow  or  other,-; — no 
one  knew  how, — an  essential  part  of  the  narrative. 

The  oldest  known  manuscript  of  the  Arabian 
Nights  is  comparatively  modern,  dating  from  1548, 
and  it  is  supposed  to  have  been  collected  in  its  present 
form,  only  a  century  earlier,  the  work  being  done  in 
Egypt  in   1450. 

Whatever  books  the  English  mariners,  Sebastian 
Cabot  and  his  crew,  may  have  l)rought  with  them  on 
their  various  voyages  to  tliis  Western  Hemisphere,  they 
could  not  have  been  fairy  or  liousehold  tales,  for  those 
contained     in     the     Disciplina     Clericalis     and     the 


98  THE   MESSAGE  OF   FROEBEL. 

Gesta  Romanonitn  were  respectively  Iavo  and  three 
centuries  old,  and  quite  out  of  the  ken  of  simple 
mariners,  and  the  modern  collections  had  not  yet 
been  made. 

America  had  been  discovered  nearly  a  century  and 
a  half,  the  bones  of  Cabot  and  Columbus  too,  all  were 
dust  and  their  good  swords  rust,  and  Shakespeare,  the 
great  fairy  lover,  had  been  dead  for  twenty  years,  when 
modern  fairy  tales  may  be  said  to  have  had  their  liter- 
ary birth  in  the  publication  by  a  gay  Italian  signer, 
II  Cavalier  Giambattista  Basile,  Conte  di  Torrone  and 
Conte  Palatino,  of  a  delightful  collection  called  II 
Pentamcrone.  It  was  written  in  ISTeapolitan  patois, 
though  the  various  tales  are  supposed  to  have  been 
gathered  in  Crete  and  in  Venice,  but  they  are  in  essen- 
tials exactly  what  have  always  been  told  as  nursery 
tales  in  all  times  and  all  countries,  and  our  old 
friends,  the  myth-makers,  are  answerable  for  every  one 
of  them. 

It  should  be  understood  of  course  that  the  term 
fairy  as  here  employed  is  not  confined  to  narratives 
in  which  elves  or  spirits  actually  appear,  but  is  taken 
as  Chaucer  used  it,  to  cover  tales  in  which  there  is 
something  faerie,  that  is,  something  enchanted  or 
extraordinary,  whether  it  he  fays,  giants,  dwarfs, 
speaking  animals,  or  indeed  Iniman  beings  of  remark- 
able wit  or  stupidity. 

Ba-sile  obviously  had  no  notion  of  the  philological 
or  mythological  value  of  liis  collection,  or  he  could 
never  have  been  so  gay  and  witty,  as  he  tells  of  The 


OUR    XURSERY    TALES.  99 

^fonths,  The  Three  Enchanted  Princes,  Peruonto  and 
the  Fairy  Wishes,  Vardillo's  Stupidity,  Cenerentohi, 
and  The  Enchanted  Doe 

"The  Dawn,"  he  says  at  the  heginning  of  one  of  his 
tales,  "had  gone  forth  to  grease  the  wheels  of  the  Sun's 
chariot  and  witli  the  fatigue  of  stirring  the  fat  into  the 
wheelbox  with  a  stick,  had  grown  as  red  as  a  rosy 
a^jple."  Here  is  modernism  for  you,  assuredly. 
And  again,  as  a  moral  to  one  of  the  tales,  "He  who  does 
not  bait  the  hook  of  the  affections  witli  courtesy  never 
catches  the  fish  of  kindness.'.' 

The  taste  of  the  times  in  regard  to  proprieties  and 
improprieties  of  allusion  is  sufficiently  evident  in  the 
Pentaineroiic  to  render  it  inadvisable  reading  for  chil- 
dren, but  the  Cavalier  evidently  set  everything  down 
with  a  light  heart  and  sang  as  he  wrote. 

Sixty  years  later  than  Basile,  only  two  centuries 
ago  now,  comes  dear  Charles  Perrault,  commonly  con- 
sidered the  literary  parent  of  the  fairy  tale.  A  con- 
temporary of  Boileau  and  Moliere  and  Bossuet,  his 
fame  in  his  own  line  is  as  bright  as  theirs  and  if,  as 
somebody  says,  we  can  judge  of  a  work  by  the  ciuantitv 
and  quality  of  things  which  it  teaches  and  inspires,  we 
may  easily  say  that  the  Contes  de  Perrault  have  at- 
tained the  highest  mark  in  their  line.  He  also  wrote 
with  jierfect  unconsciousness  it  seems;  and  repeated  his 
narratives  as  he  heard  them  from  grandanis  and  grand- 
sires,  old  nurses  and  simple  zountry  folic.  He  says  of 
them  himself  that  "they  lack  sense  and  are  therefore 
designed   for  children   that  have  little  sense  as  yet," 


100  THE   MESSAGE  OF   FROEBEL. 

and  he  does  not  dream  of  their  immense  ag'e,  or  their 
great  ethical  value.  Xo  one  doubtless  would  have 
been  more  astonished  than  Perrault  if  he  had  been 
tohl  that  he  was  dealing  with  fragments  of  ancient 
religions,  with  sun-myths  and  cloud-nivths  and  that 
several  of  his  tales  could  be  found  bodilv  in  the 
Mahohhdrata  and  the  raiirliatnntra.  It  is  said  of  the 
Conies  that  they  are  incomparably  the  most  ingenuous 
and  charming  of  all  the  collections.  Avhich.  if  true,  may 
l)e  due  to  the  fact  that  they  were  all  told  1)y  the 
autlior  and  his  friends  to  the  children  of  the  family 
around  the  fireside  in  the  evening,  and,  being  often 
rei^eated  as  dictation  exercises  next  morning,  undoubt- 
edh'  received  the  benefit  of  many  suggestions  from  a 
bevy  of  competent,  if  youthful,  critics. 

A  few  years  after  Perrault's  collection  appeared 
(1704)  came  the  translation  of  the  Arabian  Xights 
into  French,  and  then  Gozzi,  the  rival  of  Goldoni 
(1T23),  rose  upon  the  romantic  horizon  with  the  in- 
troduction of  those  fairy  dramas  which  had  such  an 
astounding  run  for  several  years  in  Italy.  L'  AngeJlino 
Bclverdr.  II  Re  Corvo,  Turandot  are  completely  for- 
gotten now,  but  they  were  remarkable  and  beautiful 
productions  in  their  time  and  exercised  a  marked  in- 
fluence upon  succeeding  literature. 

Dean  Swift  published  (rulliver's  Travels  thirtv 
years  after  Perrault's  Conies  appeared,  l3ut  they  are 
scarcely  to  be  classed  as  fairy-tales,  perhaps,  though 
the  touch  of  the  myth-maker  is  visible  upon  them, 


OUR    XURSERY    TALES.  101 

and  are  rather  humorous  extravaganzas  based  on  the 
impossible  stories  of  travelers  in  the  ]\Iiddle  Ages. 

The  nineteenth  century  was  about  to  open  when 
Tieek  wrote  his  Folk  Tales  and  Phantasus,  partly 
original  these  and  partly  drawn  from  an  inexhaustible 
source,  the  memories  of  a  race  of  child-lovers  and  child 
interpreters,  who  in  their  simplicit}'  had  kept  close 
to  Xature's  heart.  He  was  closely  followed  by  the 
Grimm  brothers,  who,  while  Great  Britain  and  Amer- 
ica were  fighting  the  War  of  1812,  were  cqllecting  their 
wonderful  treasures  of  fairy  lore  from  the  German 
peasants,  many  of  them  from  the  wife  of  a  cowherd 
near  Cassel.  With  the  advent  of  these  books  fairy 
tales  became  the  subject  of  scientific  thought  and 
study  and  the  earlier  collections  came  to  be  regarded 
in  their  true  light. 

'  Perhaps  the  best  teller  of  fairy  stories  in  the 
literary  sense  that  the  world  has  ever  seen  v>'as  Hans 
Christian  Andersen,  Ijut  his  volumes  contain  more  of 
himself  and  less  of  myth  and  tradition  than  other 
collections,  and  the  tales  are  ethereal,  symbolic,  ex- 
quisitely poetic  and  distinctly  touched  with  the  later 
modern  feeling.  The  ubiquitous  myth-maker,  who 
will  not  be  left  out  of  literature,  is  responsible  for 
some  of  them,  witness  the  story  of  the  Wild  Swans,  but 
in  The  Ugly  Duckling,  The  Flax,  The  Little  :\Iatch 
Girl  and  their  fellows,  the  literary  artist  with  a  con- 
scious purpose  is  supreme. 

Serious,  practical,  sober-minded  England,  who  had 
been  colonizing  and  fighting  and  trading  while  her 


102  THE  MESSAGE  OF  FBOEBEL. 

neighbors  were  oollecting  fairy  tales,  came  to  the 
front  in  1838  with  the  first  complete  translation  of  the 
^fabinogion,  that  great  Welsh  storehouse  of  the  ro- 
mantic and  the  supernatural,  but  it  must  not  be 
thought  because  there  had  l)een  no  notable  c-oUections 
in  England,  that  the  people  and  the  authors  thereof 
were  ignorant  of  fairj-lore.  English  literature  is  a 
living  witness  to  the  great  extent  of  that  knowledge, 
and  Thomas  the  Rh}Tner,  as  early  as  the  thirteenth 
eentnn',  wrote  an  enchanting  description  of  that  Queen 
of  Faery,  whose  love  he  was  so  fortunate  as  to  win. 

That  purely  English  fairy  tales  once  existed  in 
tolerable  numbers  there  are  evidences  in  the  celebrated 
library  list  of  Captain  Cox,  among  others,  and  in  odd 
refercnc-es  in  literature  and  in  chap-books,  but  they 
were  routed  by  the  superior  elegance  of  Perrault's  tales 
wlien  these  appeared,  and  sought  refuge  in  remote 
c-ountr}-  regions. 

There  are  certain  indications  that  the  common 
form  of  the  English  fairy  tale  was  the  cante-fable,  a 
mixture  of  prose  and  verse  of  which  the  most  illus- 
trious example  in  literature  is  Aucassin  and  Xicolete. 

Mr.  Joseph  Jacobs,  an  authority'  in  folklore,  has 
lately  collected  two  volumes  of  these  early  English 
narratives,  and  thus  viewed,  in  mass,  they  are  seen  to 
be  remarkably  vigorous,  dramatic,  and  humorous.  The 
stor\-  of  Tom  Tit  Tot  is  unequaled  in  its  line,  Mr. 
Fox,  breathlessly  exciting,  and  The  Well  of  the  World's 
End,  a  striking  and  poetic  rendering  of  a  familiar 
theme. 


OUR    XUESERY    TALES.  '  103 

If  P^nglisli  children  were  niirtiared  on  snch  narra- 
tives it  is  no  wonder  that  the  first  English  translation 
(from  the  original)  of  the  Arabian  Nights,  in  1840, 
was  received  with  such  applause,  for  the  seed  fell  on 
ground  already  well  prepared  for  the  sowing. 

The  Ettrick  Shepherd  gives  ns  a  delightful  account 
of  the  origin  of  fairv-folk  in  Britain. 

The  Knight  of  Dunldaue,  he  says,  a  certain  gentle- 
man of  honor  and  reinite.  met  on  the  hills  one  day 
while  hunting,  a  golden-haired  damsel,  more  beautiful 
than  his  eyes  had  ever  seen  before.  He  lost  no  time 
in  making  love  to  her  and  she  responded  with  equal 
impetuosity,  the  outcome  of  the  alfair  being  hi-r  con- 
sent to  be  his  bride,  Avhereitpon,  his  word  given,  she 
spirited  him  away  with  her  to  Fairyland. 

For  twelve  months  and  a  day  he  remained  in  tlie 
enchanted  underground  halls,  surrounded  by  every 
luxury,  but  hearing  no  voice  and  seeing  no  face  but 
that  of  his  bride,  who  came  to  him  each  evening  in 
fresh  attire  and  fairer  than  the  moon  on  a  clear 
night. 

At  the  end  of  the  year,  when  the  fay  was  about 
to  become  a  mother,  she  apparently  grew  excet'dingly 
anxious  as  to  the  future  of  the  expected  babe,  on  at- 
count  of  the  racial  difference  between  its  parents,  and 
so  wearied  the  Knight  with  her  plaints  that  one  day 
he  pettishly  exclaimed  that  he  wished  he  were  at  home 
again. 

To  wish  is  to  have,  you  know,  in  Fairyland,  and  on 
the  instant  he  was  transported  to  the  doors  of  his  castle. 


104  THE  MESSAGE  OF  EROEBEL. 

where  at  first  no  one  knew  him  und  even  his  dogs 
refnsed  to  come  at  his  call.  He  was  indeed  greatly 
changed,  and  as  days  went  by  grew  pale  and  wistful, 
took  no  interest  in  things  of  earth  and  longed  un- 
ceasingly for  his  bride.  At  last  one  day,  a  lovel}'  lady 
apiDeared  leading  a  beautiful  child  by  either  hand  and 
at  once  the  Knight  welcomed  her  as  his  fairy  bride, 
having  no  need  of  the  love-tokens  she  showed  to  con- 
vince him  of  her  identity  and  gladly  acknowledging 
the  tAvin-children  as  his  own.  He  was  still  in  trans- 
ports of  joy  when  a  second  fair  lady  and  other  twins 
appeared  and  upon  her  heels  still  another  dame,  until 
seven  resplendent  beings  attended  by  fourteen  infants 
were  assembled  in  the  room,  each  one  jDroducing  ir- 
refutable testimony  that  she  was  the  rightful  wife. 

Upon  this  scene  of  confusion  the  Knight's  old 
mother  entered  and  bv  a  few  simple  spells  proved  that 
the  brides  were  the  Seven  Weird  Sisters  doomed  to 
remain  under  enchantment  until  some  gallant  cavalier 
should  wed  them  all. 

They  one  and  all  disappeared  at  the  sigh  of  the 
cross  made  by  the  old  mother,  considerately  leaving  the 
fourteen  children  behind  them  lest  their  father  be 
lonely,  and  chanting  as  they  vanished  this  last  in- 
junction : — 

"Sweet  babes,  adieu!    and  may  you  nevei-  rue 
The   mingled   existence  we   leave   to   you. 
There   is   part   of   virtue   and   part   of   blame, 
Part   of   spirit   and    part   of    flame, 
Part  of  body  and   passion  fell, 
Part   of  heaven   and   part  of  hell. 


OUR    XURSERT    TALES.  105 

You  are  babies  of  beauty  and  babies  of  wonder. 
But  fly  from  the  cloud  of  the  lightning  and  thunder. 
And  keej)  by  the  moonbeam  or  twilight  gray, 
For  j-ou  never  were  made  for  the  light  of  day. 
Long   may   you   amid   your   offspring   dwell, — 
Babies   of   beauty,    kiss   and   farewell!" 

The  Knight  of  Diinbkine,  it  is  rejjorted,  never 
afterward  uttered  a  word,  which  is  not  surprising,  con- 
sidering the  shock  his  system  must  have  received,  but 
moved  al)out  for  a  time  like  a  spirit  in  pain  and  then 
vanished   from  mortal  sight. 

It  is  said  that  he  was  eventually  made  the  Patri- 
arch King  of  the  Scottish  Fays,  but  however  that  may 
be,  his  progeny  seem  to  have  made  themselves  entirely 
at  home  on  British  soil,  apparently  preferring  their 
father  to  their  mother  land. 

An  interesting  thing  to  Ije  noted  in  connection  with 
fairy  beings  is  that  they  seem  to  decrease  in  size  with 
the  progress  of  civilization.  The  old  myth-makers, 
weaving  their  mighty  fancies  on  the  mighty  forces 
of  the  universe,  attributed  no  personality  or  physical 
jjresence  to  these  forces,  and  it  was  only  as  they  de- 
generated into  gods  and  demons  and  thence  into  mag- 
ical beings  of  various  orders,  gifted  with  beneficent 
and  malevolent  powers,  that  they  began  to  appear  as 
flower-folk,  as  elves,  sprites,  brownies,  trolls,  pixies, 
and  other  creatures  of  diminutive  size.  They  appear 
to  be  markedly  influenced  by  political  changes  also,  for 
their  scarcity  in  modern  France  is  accounted  for  by 
the  story  that,  terrified  by  the  thunders  of  the  Eevolu- 
tion,  they  left  the  country  in  a  body,  first  assembling  in 


100  THE  MESSAGE  OF  FROEBEL. 

lirntcrul  coneonrso  around  the  tomb  of  PerrcUilt,  npoii 
whose  manes  they  conferred  tlie  boon  of  immortalit_Y. 
Wq  doul)t  not  that  the}'  then  followed  the  example 
of  other  illnstrious  fugitives  and  took  refuge  in 
Enghnid,  the  home  of  the  exile,  for  no  one  race  of 
home-l^red  fairy-folk  could  have  existed  under  as 
many  names  as  English  speech  has  for  them  to-day. 

These  same  Protean  and  magic  creatures  apiieclr  to 
be  extremely  adaptable  in  religious  matters,  embrac- 
ing Christianity  and  serving  as  decorous  godfathers 
ami  godmothers,  if  occasion  requires,  or  riding  broom- 
sticks, M'caving  horrid  spells  and  dancing  at  the  revels 
of  demon  worshipers,  if  they  so  elect.  On  the 
whole  it  may  be  said  tliat  they  are,  as  a  race,  but  im- 
perfectly inoculated  with  religious  ideas  as  yet,  and 
since  tlie  possession  of  a  soul  seems  to  be  an  object 
of  aspiration  with  some  of  tliem  at  least,  it  may  be 
that  a  modern  mission  to  the  fairies  would  be  crowned 
witli  encouraging  success. 

Their  dispositions  seem  to  l)e  easily  affected,  which, 
perhaps,  makes  the  ease  somewhat  more  liopeful,  in  one 
light  at  least,  for  an  Irishman  of  to-day  complains 
that  the  Scots  have  had  a.  baleful  influence  on  the 
ghost  and  fairy  temperament,  making  it  both  "dour 
and  dowie." 

Leaving  the  wee  folk  themselves  and  returning  to 
their  legends  again,  we  find  that  in  all  times  and 
countries  they  deal  with  the  following  subjects :  Fairy 
Births,  Changelings,  Eol)beries  from  Fairyland,  Super- 
natural Lapses  of  Time  in  that  Country,  Bird  Maidens. 


OUR    XURSERY    TALES.  107 

Invisible  Caps  and  Cloaks,  Shoes  of  Swiftness,  Magical 
Captures  and  Eescnes,  Inexhaustible  Purses,  Gold- 
Producing  i\.nimals.  Dragons  and  Monstrous  Birds, 
Sub-Ac[ueous  Fair}-  Halls,  Forbidden  Eooms,  Magic 
Words,  Impossible  Tasks,  Cupid  and  Psyche  Legends, 
Fairy  Hinds,  Magic  Boats,  Life  Depending  on  some 
Extraneous  Object,  Enchanted  Horses,  Demons  in 
Bottles,  Contracts  with  the  Evil  One,  Three  Wishes, 
Ping-  and  Fish  Legends,  jNIen  Swallowed  by  Monster 
Fish,  Magical  Transformations,  Thankful  Beasts,  and 
Secrets  Learned  from  Birds. 

Stories  dealing  with  these  last  two  topics,  with 
beasts  gifted  with  human  speech  and  human  intellect, 
capable  even  of  assuming  human  form  sometimes,  and 
their  relations  with  man  are  very  ancient,  as  has  been 
shown,  and  are  always  classed  with  fairy  tales ;  though 
the>'  seem,  in  some  respects,  hardly  to  belong  to  them. 
They  are  called  specifically  "household  tales,"  though 
the  name  labels  rather  than  defines  them  and  they  form 
a  separate  branch  of  the  great  mass  of  folklore,  one 
in  which  that  view  of  the  animal  kingdom  sliown 
by  Totemism  is  distirctly  traceable. 

Still  another  class  of  folk-tales  commou  lo  all 
times  and  countries  is  the  "cumulative  story,"  such  as 
"The  House  that  Jack  Built."  or  "The  Old  Woman 
and  her  Crooked  Sixpence."  I'li is  latter  narrative  is, 
in  fact,  an  almost  literal  translation  of  a  mystical 
hymn  in  the  "SepJier  Uaggadali"  of  the  Talmud,  and 
is  an  interesting  example  of  the  hoary  old  age  of  some 
of  our  modern  nurserv  favorites. 


108  THE  MESSAGE  OF  FBOEBEL. 

When  wo  begin  to  study  the  subject  we  are  sur- 
prised to  note  how  many  of  our  English  writers,  em- 
inent in  other  lines  of  literature,  from  Chaucer  and 
Spenser,  Milton  and  Shakespeare,  down  to  the  present 
time,  have  written,  collected,  and  edited  plays,  poems, 
and  stories  devoted  to  the  world  of  faerie.  To  give  only 
the  most  ordinary  and  well-known  examples  of  yester- 
day and  to-day,  there  are  the  Kingsleys,  Charles  and 
Henry,  with  their  Water  Babies  and  Boy  in  Grey; 
Lewis  Carroll  with  his  famous  Alice  books;  Andrew 
Lang  with  his  Rainbow  series ;  George  Macdonald  and 
his  Back  of  the  North  Wind ;  Jean  Ingelow  and  Mopsa 
the  Fairy;  Hawthorne  and  his  Wonder  Book  and 
Tanglewood  Tales;  Drake  and  his  Culprit  Fay;  Laf- 
cadio  Hearn  and  Stray  Leaves  from  Strange  Litera- 
tures, and  Stevenson  and  the  Bottle  Imp,  The  Isle  of 
Voices,  Will  0'  the  Mill,  Thrawn  Janet,  Markheim 
and  several  of  the  fables,  which  are  not  fables  at  all 
in  the  strict  sense  of  the  word.  We  may  add  to  the 
illustrious  roll.  Dickens,  Thackeray,  Lowell,  Tennyson, 
Robert  Browning,  Charles  LamlD,  George  Sand,  Char- 
lotte Bronte,  Miss  Yonge,  William  Morris,-  most  of 
whose  longer  jjoems  are  based  on  faerie  subjects,  Miss 
Mulock,  Sir  Richard  Burton,  Longfellow,  Ruskin, 
George  Meredith,  Quiller-Couch.  Frank  Stockton,  W. 
D.  Howclls,  James  Whitcomb  Riley,  Joel  Chandler 
Harris  and  Rudyard  Kipling. 

As  soon  as  we  begin  to  attempt  a  classification  of 
these  productions  we  see  at  once  the  entirely  new 
element  which  has  entered  into  the  fairy  tale  of  to- 


OUR    XURSERY    TALES.  109 

'lay  and  the  complete  departure  of  some  of  them 
from  the  old  traditions. 

This  new  element  makes  no  part  of  the  varioiis 
modern  collections,  which  are  merely  the  old  favorites 
clad  in  new  garments,  nor  of  the  classic  m3i;hs  retold, 
Avhich  are  so  fashionable  just  now ;  nor  does  it  show  its 
face  in  the  nursery  tales  recently  gathered  in  strange 
countries  and  among  strange  peoples,  the  Zulus,  the 
Zuiiis,  the  Esquimaux,  the  Persians,  Arabians,  Chinese 
and  Japanese,  and  the  folk  of  the  Deccan.  These  are 
all  hoary  with  antiquity,  all  bear  a  family  likeness 
to  one  another  and  to  our  own  primitive  fireside  tales 
and  would  be  welcomed  as  at  least  distant  cousins 
wherever  met. 

Lewis  Carroll's  books,  on  the  contrary,  represent 
a  distinct  new  class,  a  class  of  freakish  adventures, 
topsy-turvy  conditions  and  general  upsidedownness. 
The  chief  joy  of  these  stories  is  the  delicious  unex- 
pectedness of  everything — the  pleasure,  for  instance,  of 
hunting  an  impossible  beast,  under  impossil)le  circum- 
stances, with  impossible  weapons  through  an  impossible 
journey  and  finding  out  at  the  end  that  he  was  some- 
thing else  after  all  and  even  that  something  else  has 
escaped  us. 

This  is  grotesqueness  certainly,  and  grotesqueness 
is  nothing  new  in  the  liranch  of  literature  we  are 
discussing,  but  the  marked  point  of  difference  is  that 
Lewis  Carroll,  as  a  product  of  modern  times,  is  gro- 
tesque on  purpose,  and  here  he  is  a  sworn  brother  of 
Frank  Stockton's,  who  exploits  the  grotesque  as  sue- 


110  THE    ■M  PASSAGE  OF   FROEBEL. 

cessfully  in  his  fairy  talcs  as  in  his  stories  for  mature 
readers'. 

This  is  tlie  great  distinction,  perhaps,  that  might 
he  made  hetween  the  fairy  stories  of  the  last  half  cen- 
tury and  their  predecessors — that  they  are  now  com- 
monly written  with  a  conscious  purpose  to  serve  as  a 
vehicle  for  instruction,  for  satire,  he  it  bitter  or  play- 
ful, for  argument,  or  for  furtherance  of  political 
views.  Such  are  the  fairy  tales  of  the  Kingsleys. 
Macdonald,  Dickens,  Thackeray,  Lamb,  and  Howells, 
to  give  a  few  conspicuous  examples,  and  such  also  is 
an  exquisite  little  book,  The  Elf  Errant,  published 
lately  by  Moira  O'jSTeill.  Then  there  are  the  pure- 
ly sportive  narratives,  like  Anstey's  Tinted  Venus,  and 
Vice  A'ersa,  which  toss  about  the  old  fairy-tale  conven- 
tions like  shuttle-cocks  and  laugh  as  they  see  them 
flying  through  the  air,  and  the  eccentric  variety, 
resembling  the  Beardsley  illustrations  in  their  dis- 
tortion of  possibilities.  These  are  decidedly  decadent 
in  general  tone,  ephemeral  in  their  make-up  and 
really  give  no  more  lasting  pleasure  to  the  children 
for  whom  they  are  Avritten,  than  the  clown  does  when 
he  puts  his  head  l^etween  his  legs  and  grins  at  the 
audience  upside  down. 

Many  of  the  recent  fairy  tales,  exclusive  of  this  last 
variety,  are  witty,  tender,  graceful,  amusing — serious 
and  thoughtful,  too,  sometimes:  but  the  l^light  of 
modernism  has  fallen  upon  them;  they  no  longer 
believe  in  themselves,  and  hence  their  deep  indwelling 
charm  has  vanished. 


OUR    XURSERY    TALES.  Ill 

There  have  been  also  of  late  years  a  number  of 
old  ""motives"  in  fairy  lore  worked  i;p  into  new  com- 
positions with  modern  backgrounds,  and  these  have 
been  humorous  and  decidedly  successful  among  chil- 
dren, a  good  example  being  Chris  and  the  Wonderful 
Lamp,  an  Aladdin-up-to-date  production,  which  won 
much  youthful  applause  in  the  St.  Nicholas  lately. 

Perhaps  Mr.  Palmer  Cox's  "Brownies"  may  be 
counted  under  this  head,  unless,  indeed,  from  their 
astounding  and  phenomenal  success  they  merit  a  sepa- 
rate compartment  by  themselves.  There  was  a  time 
when  juvenile  literature  was  overrun  by  a  Tartar 
horde  of  Brownies,  and  all  other  fays,  elves,  sprites, 
and  hobgoblins  hid  their  heads  in  caves  and  lonely 
forests. 

Xor  is  the  invasion  over;  new  Brownie  adventures 
are  still  being  published  and  witnesses  to  the  mighty 
power  of  the  race  are  to  be  seen  in  Brownie  plays, 
Brownie  cards  and  note-paper.  Brownie  caps  and 
dresses.  Brownie  dolls.  Brownie  candy.  Brownie  pins, 
paperweights,  penwipers,  and  pincushions. 

For  several  years  the  old  hymn  was  altogether 
superseded  and  children  refused  to  sing  anything  but 

"I  want  to  be  a  Brownie 
And  with  the  Brownies  stand," 

and  yet  these  little  beings  seem  ultra-modern  in 
costume  and  bearing  to  the  true  fairy-lover  and  con- 
descend, in  his  opinion,  far  too  much  to  present  con- 
ditions in  their  favorite  sports  and  enterprises. 


112  THE  MESSAGE  OF  FROEBEL. 

Among  our  recent  revealers  of  fairy  treasure,  of 
m)i;h  and  legend,  outside  of  the  collectors  of  nursery- 
tales  in  all  nations,  Howard  Pyle  merits  especial  men- 
tion, perhaps,  for  the  originality  of  his  tales,  their 
graceful  composition,  their  inherent  interest,  the  dex- 
terous way  in  which  ancient  and  modern  have  been 
blended  in  them,  and  the  old-world  atmosphere  which 
wraps  them  round. 

George  Meredith's  Shaving  of  Shagpat  is  said  by 
an  English  critic,  Mr.  Alfred  Xutt,  to  be  the  only  one 
of  the  modern,  consciously  invented  fairy  tales  which 
conforms  fully  to  the  folk-tale  conventions. 

It  is  not  a  child's  story,  of  course,  but  the  critic 
is  right  in  saying  that  it  follows  the  ancient  formulae 
as  closely  and  accurately  as  the  best  of  Grimm's  or  of 
Campbell's  tales.  ' 

"To  divine  the  nature  of  a  convention  and  to  use 
its  capabilities  to  the  utmost  is  a  special  mark  of 
genius,"  says  ]\Ir.  Xutt,  and  the  observation  brings  us 
naturally  to  Eudyard  Kipling's  Jungle  Stories,  the 
great  achievement  of  recent  liteBfiriire  in  this  line. 
Overtopping  all  other  books  of  tlie  kind  as  the  century 
plant  overtops  the  geranium,  they  show  the  mighty 
power  of  genius  which  can  deal  with  subjects  eternally 
old,  and  with  a  touch  of  the  finger  make  them  eternally 
new. 

There  have  been  many  well-authenticated  cases  of 
native  children  in  India,  suckled  by  wolves  and  spend- 
ing years  in  a  M'ild  life  but  little  different  from  that 
of  the  savage  creatures  among  which  they  found  refuge. 


OUR    NURSERY    TALES.  113 

Xot  only  may  such  a  case  1)e  true  to  fact,  though  that  is 
of  slight  importaiieo,  Init  it  is  true  to  spirit  also;  there 
is  a  deep  meaning  in  it  which  the  old  myth-makers 
universally  felt  and  utilized  and  which  Emerson  voices 
in  his  poem  on  "Power." 

"Cast  the  bantling  on  the  rocks. 

Suckle  him  with  the  she-wolfs  teat, 
Wintered  with  the  hawk  and  fox. 

Power  and  speed  be  hands  and  feet."' 

"Mowgli"  has  many  predecessors  in  the  realm  of 
myth,  legend,  and  folk-tale,  and  his  attendant  animals 
many  brothers  in  the  household  stories  of  all  nations, 
but  herein  lies  one  great  power  of  their  lives  and 
adventures,  that  the}'  are  Irailt  on  foundations  rock- 
ribbed  like  the  hills  and  ancient  as  the  sun. 

It  is  evident  enough  that  Mr.  Kipling,  as  a  child 
in  India,  was  nurtured  on  these  animal  tales,  and  it 
is  probable  that  witli  his  tremendous  receptive  power 
he  absorbed  the  whole  literary  stock  in  trade  of  many 
a  dusky  native,  but  that  does  not  account  for  the 
Jungle  Stories  any  more  than  carbon  accounts  for 
the  luster  of  the  diamond,  or  than  hydrogen  and  oxy- 
gen in  specific  quantities  account  for  the  sparkle  in 
the  fountain.  It  is  the  old  myth  over  again.  The 
treasures  are  ever  waiting,  but  the  door  of  the  cave 
will  not  open  till  the  hero  says  the  magic  word. 

The  beasts  of  Mr.  Kipling's  jungle  live  as  no  ani- 
mals have  ever  lived  before  in  literature,  though  his 
life-giving  power  and  his  wide  and  tender  sympathy 


lit  THE   :\[t;S8AGE  OF   FIIOEBEL. 

with  thf  hrulc  creation  were  shown  ns  long  ago  in 
Her  Majesty's  8e]?^'ants,  My  Lord,  The  Elephant  and 
The  ^ilaltese  Cat.  Up  to  Mr.  Kipling's  time  the  beasts 
of  faljle  and  folk-tale  were  but  skins  stuffed  with 
straw ;  now  they  live  and  move  and  have  their  being, 
for  the  gods  have  breathed  into  their  nostrils. 

It  is  in  their  relations  with  Mcwgii  that  the 
wolves,  the  tiger,  the  python,  the  monkeys,  stand  out 
most  boldly,  and  this  is  always  so  in  the  household 
tale, — man  and  the  brute  must  be  contrasted,  must 
be  set  over  against  each  other  that  the  characters  'of 
both  may  appear  more  strongly. 

Although  Mr.  Kiiiling's  achievements  may  be  said 
to  be  ours  because  he  is  of  our  race  and  language,  yet 
we  have  a  writer  nearer  home,  a  tale-teller  of  the 
domestic  jungle,  of  whom  we  have  great  reason  to  be 
proud.  Mr.  Joel  Chandler  Harris'  Uncle  Eemvis  S'.to- 
ries  are  as  valuable  to  literature  as  Mr.  Kipling  s  in 
that  they  are  of  a  distinct,  new  kind,  and.  told  with 
consummate  grace  and  art;  and  as  valuable  to  the 
student  of  folklore  because  they  show  the  universal 
elements  of  the  tales  of  all  nations,  preserved  in  this 
case  and  brought  to  this  country  b}^  the  native  African. 
Mr.  Harris'  animals  are  wonderfully  lifelike  and  con- 
vincing, but  though  they  more  abound  in  humor  they 
are  commonly  somewhat  less  serious,  purposeful,  and 
dramatic  than  the  beasts  of  the  Indian  jungle. 

There  are  exceptions  to  this  statement,  however, 
and  one  is  the  Black  Stallion's  story  of  his  wonderful 
midnight  gallop  to  save  the  Yankee  schoolmaster  from 


OUR    XURSERY    TALES.  115 

lynchers,  which  is  full  to  the  brim  of  dramatic  fire  and 
thrills  you  with  every  beat  of  his  hoofs  and  every  pant- 
ing breath  he  draws. 

Both  jungle  writers  are  absolutely  spontaneous  and 
are  evidently  so  carried  along  Ijy  tlie  vivid  interest  of 
their  subjects  that  they  believe  for  the  time  in  every 
word  they  say  and  therefore  fill  the  reader  with  a 
similar  conviction. 

One  of  Mr.  Harris"  latest  characters  "Aaron,  the 
Arab  Slave,"  tells  us  that  he  who  has  been  "touched,'' 
that  is,  he  who  has  had  the  sign  of  the  doulde  cross 
made  on  tlie  inner  side  of  his  left  thunil),  knows  the 
language  of  all  animals,  and  we  are  sure  at  once  that 
both  Mr.  Harris'  nurse  and  ^h\  Kipling's  performed 
the  mystic  rite  upon  their  charges  in  early  infancy. 

Another  most  valuable  contribution  to  American 
literature  is  Mr.  Charles  Lummis'  collection  of  Pueblo 
folk-tales,  entitled  The  i\ran  Who  :\rarried  the  Moon. 
There  is  an  Antelo])e  boy  in  this  Ijook  who  is  a  near 
relative  of  Mowgli  on  the  foster  mother's  side  and  a 
Coyote  whose  ancestors  certainly  knew  "Brer  Rabbit" 
and  "Brer  Fox."  The  stories  are  fvdl  of  quiet  humor, 
full,  too,  of  tenderness,  insight,  and  wisdom,  and  are 
altogether  so  superior  to  some  of  the  nursery  tales  of 
other  countries  that  we  feel  an  added  interest  in  the 
people  who  have  preserved  and  transmitted  them. 
When  we  consider  the  Zuiii  Tales  and  the  Uncle  Remus 
Stories  we  can  but  feel  that  the  African  essayist  was 
partially  right  at  least,  who  lately  wrote  in  relation  to 
the  coiitrihutioii  of  his  ncoidc  to  our  civilization:    "Al- 


llCi  THE  MESSAGE  OF   FROEBEL. 

rcadv  wo  come  not  empty  handed,  there  is  to-day  no 
true  American  music  but  the  sweet  wild  melodies  of 
the  negro  slave;  the  American  fairy  tales  are  Indian 
and  African,  we  are  the  sole  oasis  of  simple  faith  and 
reverence  in  a  desert  of  dollars  and  smartness."* 

It  was  lately  remarked  in  one  of  our  leading  literary 
periodicals  that  there  are  now  a  large  and  increasing 
number  of  children  who  find  no  pleasure  in  fairy 
tales,  Init  rather  delight  in  the  records  of  actual 
occurrences.  The  statement  was  not  supported  by  any 
proofs,  however,  and  was  possibly  a  hasty  generaliza- 
tion made  l)y  a  writer,  who,  condemned  to  wearing 
blue  glasses  himself,  saw  the  whole  world  of  the  same 
dull   hue. 

It  has  always  been  true  that  fairy  tales  failed  to 
appeal  to  a  few  exceptional  children  and  doubtless 
even  in  the  time  of  the  myth-makers,  hard-headed  and 
scornful  savages  existed  wlio  said  naught  but  "Pshaw  I" 
when  told  that  the  Sun  and  the  Dawn-maiden  were 
lovers  and  pooh-poohed  the  theory  that  the  mountains 
were  the  moulderiug  bones  of  a  mighty  Jotiin,  the 
stars  golden  missiles  useful  for  stoning  the  devil. 

So  sweei^ing  an  assertion  as  that  of  a  general  decay 
of  childish  interest  in  fairy  tales  would  require  proof 
by  scientific  investigation,  for  in  the  very  nature 
of  things  it  would  appear  impossible  that  it  should  be 
true.     To  one  who  holds  in  anv  deorec  to  the  theorv 


*W.   E.   Biirghardt   Dii  Bois,  Atlantic   Monthly.   August, 
1897. 


OUR    NURSERY    TALES.  117 

of  parallelism  of  development  between  the  child  and 
the  race,  it  seems  clear  that  these  tales  which  were 
"conceived  by  primitive  men  as  concrete  examples  of 
■general  truths  must  naturalh'  be  received  with  joy 
by  children  who  are  in  a  corresponding  stage  of  de- 
velopment." 

It  may  be  that  the  small  persons  of  to-day,  who 
are  somewhat  imbued  from  birth  with  the  scientific 
spirit,  linger  a  shorter  time  in  the  realm  of  the 
fairies  than  did  their  ancestors,  but  some  term  of  resi- 
dence there  seems  to  be  fundamentally  necessary  to 
development.  To  shut  the  child  away  from  myth 
and  fair}'  tale  is,  as  Lowell  says  in  regard  to  poetry, 
*'to  close  up  the  windows  of  nature  on  the  emotional 
and  imaginative  sides/'  and  from  such  a  course  dis- 
aster must  inevitably  come. 

The  poets  have  long  whimsically  protested  against 
the  too  early  inoculation  of  children  with  the  scientific 
virus  and  there  are  those  who  contend  that  the  practice 
involves  a  distinct  element  of  danger  to  the  growing 
mind  and  soul.  There  is  a  story  of  Tennyson  and 
one  of  his  nephews  which  is  doubtless  mythical,  but 
is  worth  quoting  as  illustrative  of  the  poetic  point 
of  view.  The  conversation  on  a  certain  occasion,  it 
seems,  turned  on  education  and  the  spread  of  scientifie 
knowledge.  "Yes,"  said  the  Laureate,  "it  is  spreading, 
and  it  is  crushing  all  the  romance  and  poetry  out  of 
children's  lives.  It  was  only  yesterday  I  was  walking 
in  the  fields  witli  one  of  my  nephews,  a  little  chap  of 
eisfht  or  ten,  wlien  we  came  to  a  fairv  ring.     'Look," 


118  THE  MESSAGE  OF  FEOEBEL. 

I  said ;  'look  here,  my  boy,  here  "s  a  fairy  ring.'  'A 
what,  uncle?"  he  asked,  in  a  surprised  sort  of  way. 

"  'Why,  a  fairy  ring,  my  lad,'  I  said.  'The  wee 
good  folk  must  have  been  dancing  here  last  night, 
and  this  is  the  mark  of  their  feet  on  the  sward.'  'Oh, 
Uncle  Alfred,'  he  replied  quite  gravely,  'it  is  well 
kno'svn  that  these  fairy  rings,  as  you  call  them,  are 
caused  by  a  species  of  fungus.' "" 

Such  a  little  prig  as  this  would  l)e  the  despair  of 
any  riglit-minded  mother,  and  we  can  bvit  think  him 
a  lusus  naturae,  or  one  of  those  exceptions  required 
to  prove  a  rule. 

One  can  but  wonder  if  the  parents,  and  there  are 
such,  who  entirely  disapprove  of  fairy  tales  for  chil- 
dren, have  given  the  subject  careful  thought,  and 
realize  how  the  ideal  representatives  of  this  branch  of 
literature  in  their  simple  humor,  their  ingenuous  views 
of  all  things,  their  poetic  subject-matter,  their  dis- 
closure of  constancy,  generosity,  fidelity  and  purity  in 
man  and  beast,  their  scorn  of  definite  time  and  place, 
their  youthful  way  of  seeing  and  feeling,  how  abso- 
lutely suited  these  are  to  childhood  and  how  admirably 
adapted  to  developing  the  imagination  as  well  as  to 
introducing  the  young  human  creature  into  universal 
human  conditions.  The  recounting  of  actual  occur- 
rences, as  suggested  by  the  critic  already  quoted,  though 
most  valuable  at  a  later  stage  of  development,  cannot 
serve  the  purpose  of  the  folk  story  in  early  years,  and 
neither  can  the  fairy  tales  of  science,  so-called.  This 
term,  by  the  way,  is  a  complete  misnomer,  for  they  are 


OUR    NURSERV    TALES.  119 

as  far  removed  from  the  primitive  nursery  tale  as 
the  east  is  from  the  west,  originating  in  a  different 
stage  of  the  world's  progress,  siiited  to  a  different 
age  and  serving  different  purposes  in  the  cultivation  of 
mind  and  soul.  One  is  no  more  to  be  substituted  for 
the  other  than  night  for  da)^,  though  both  are  useful 
in  their  turn.  We  may  indeed  call  them  wonder  sto- 
ries and  reverence  their  power  of  leading  the  soul 
from  nature  up  to  nature's  God,  but  fairy  tales  they 
are  not  and  can  never  be. 

If  we  tell  fairy  stories  at  all  then,  let  us  tell  "truly"' 
ones,  as  the  children  say.  and  decline  to  countenance 
those  mummers  of  modern  literature  who  hold  the 
lesson  book  under  their  gay  clothing  and  whack  the 
unsuspecting  child  with  it  when  safe  occasion  offers 
itself.  Let  us  have,  too,  not  only  a  "truly"  fairy  tale, 
but  one  which  remains  such  to  the  end,'  for  there  is 
nothing  so  insulting  to  the  youthful  imagination  as 
that  clumsy,  makeshift  narrative  which  closes  by  sa}^- 
ing,  "And  then  little  John,  or  little  Jane,  as  the  case 
may  be,  awakened  and  found  it  was  all  a  dream." 

We  need  not,  of  necessity,  although  warm  in  our 
convictions,  be  such  devotees  of  the  fairy  tale  as  to 
clamor  for  it  for  ourselves  and  for  our  children  first, 
last  and  all  the  time,  l)ut  we  may  well  claim  for  it  the 
same  place  in  daily  life  that  we  claim  for  poetry. 

The  soul  needs  food  as  well  as  the  body,  indeed 
it  needs  more  and  better  food,  for  one  is  the  germ  of 
life,  the  other  but  the  husk  which  envelops  it.  The 
imagination  must  be  ministered  unto,  and  it    is   idle 


120  THE  MESSAGE  OF  FROEBEL. 

to  supi^ose  that  it  will  content  itself  altogether  with 
the  practical,  the  instructive,  the  didactic. 

"In  a  last  analysis,"  wrote  Mr.  Lowell,  "  it  may 
be  said  that  it  is  to  the  sense  of  wonder  that  all 
literature  of  the  fancy  and  of  the  imagination  appeals, 
and  if  this  sense  is  the  survival  in  us  of  some  savage 
ancestor  of  the  age  of  flint,  we  may  Atell  be  thankful 
to  him  for  his  longevity,  or  his  transmitted  nature, 
whichever  it  may  be." 

The  whole  Eomantic  movement  in  literature,  when- 
ever and  wherever  it  has  appeared,  appeals  to  this 
same  ancestor  and  his  sense  of  wonder,  and  that  good 
red  blood  of  his  runs  in  our  veins  to-day  as  hotly  as 
it  did  in  the  veins  of  our  fathers,  and  tlirills  at  the 
same  magic  touch. 

"Romance  is  dead,  say  some ;  Init  I  say  no ! " 

"God  keep  my  youth  and  love  alive,  that  I 
May  wonder  at  this  world  imtil   I  die; 

Let  sea  and  mountain  speak  to  me,  that  so 
\Yaking  or  sleeping,  I  may  fight  the  lie; 
Eomance  is  dead,  say  some;  but  I  say  no!" 


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